One Native Life Read Online Free

never really rang true for me. A part of me craved the revelation of secrets, and the sky was deep with mystery. I loved sinking myself into it. I hadn’t read yet about light years or the rate of expansion of the universe or galactic clouds or even the Milky Way. Instead, I was transfixed by something that far exceeded the scope of my one small life. Magic existed in the holes between the stars. I could feel it.
    When I moved south after I was adopted, the sky was overpowered by the harsh city lights, and the stars seemed farther away. It was a curious feeling, being lonely for the sky. Of all the things I missed in that new southern world, the sky, the stars and space are what I remember missing most.
    There was a field down the street from where I lived in Bradford. It had been the pasture of an old sheep farm before the city encroached and drove the farmer and his family away. The field was marked with orange plastic flags on wooden stakes in preparation for the development to come. But after dark it was wide and open and perfect for looking at stars. I’d sneak out at night and go there to stand under that magnificent canopy. Even though their light was dimmer and there were far fewer than I was used to, the stars eased me some, lightened my burden.
    One night a man showed me how to find Arcturus. He was a fellow stargazer, a neighbour who lived down the street. Neither of us knew the other’s name, but we’d see each other at the field. Each of us would stand silently in that patch of open and look up. Sometimes he’d lie down on his back and put his hands behind his head, and it wasn’t long before I was doing the same. He’d trace the path of satellites across the sky with one finger, and I adopted the same trick.
    The night he showed me how to find Arcturus, the sky was as clear as I’d ever seen it there. The man stood a few feet away, his face pointed up at the sky, and asked me if I’d heard of it. When I said I hadn’t, he began to talk.
    Arcturus is called the Bear Watcher, he said, because it follows the Great Bear constellation around the poles. Arctis is Greek for bear, and it’s where the word “arctic” comes from. Arcturus is about thirty-seven light years away from us and the fourth brightest star in the sky. He told me all that while looking up and away from me. I felt the awe in his words.
    He told me to look at the Big Dipper, find the star at the end of the handle, then hold my hand out in front of my face, bend the three middle fingers in and put my little finger on that star. Where my thumb sat was Arcturus.
    When I did it I smiled. For the first time the stars seemed reachable. All through the years of my boyhood, whenever I felt particularly lonely I would hold out my arm, fold my fingers, find Arcturus and feel comforted.
    What the nameless man gave me that night was wonder. There were secrets everywhere, and I could reveal them for myself if I had the desire to search. I did. I wondered. Soon I was reading everything I could about the universe. I learned about planets and nebulae, quarks and quasars, red giants, blue dwarfs and black holes, and I encountered Einstein’s assertion that “my sense of God is my sense of wonder at the universe.” Years later, when I sat in traditional circles and heard the elders and the storytellers talk about the sky and its mysteries, these weren’t foreign ideas.
    We all need someone to offer us wonder. We all need someone to share the Great Mystery of the universe, to allow us to see into it even a fraction. Then, when we’ve discovered it for ourselves, we need to offer it to others. That’s how the world opens up for us. It’s how we learn to see possibility in a universe of change. Finding Arcturus is a simple thing to do. I still do it, and every time it’s like that first time. Because, well, how often do you get to say you just discovered a star?

Upside Down and Backwards
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    I DO MY WRITING in the dimness of morning. Outside, the