The Space and the Beach
A handful of sand contains about ten thousand grains, more than the number of stars we can see with the naked eye on a clear night. But the number of stars we can see is only the tiniest fraction of the number of stars that are.
What we see at night is the merest smattering of the nearest stars. Meanwhile the Cosmos is rich beyond measure; the total number of stars in the universe is greater than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.
The beach reminds us of space. The rising and falling of the surf is produced in part by tides. The Moon and the Sun are far away. But their gravitational influence is real and noticeable back here on Earth. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been produced from larger rocks through ages of jostling and rubbing, abrasion and erosion, again driven through waves and weather by the distant Moon and Sun.
The beach reminds us of time. The world is much older than the human species.
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| I love the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night (quotations from Megan) Image © Megan Jorgensen (Elena) |
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