061 - Sixty-One

[TRANSCRIPT]

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Hey, Birdie.

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It is really goddamn late. And goddamned dark. I wanted to wait for the worst of the heat of the day to pass before hiking back to the car, but I think I miscalculated, because I’ve been hiking in the dark for way too long.

Not that it’s been so hot here, but the sun is strong. All that big sky, I guess. The sun is strong and my skin is pale. All my freckles are popping out like it’s the middle of summer not October.

I’ve been out in the wild for the last couple of days. I packed up my backpack after the last transmission and set out into the great unknown. I mean, not entirely unknown—I’m not stupid, I made sure to get a map of the area I’m in, but just 10 minutes on foot away from where I parked the car, and I felt like I was in some version of the world that had never had any people in it at all.

Any semblance of a hiking trail is long gone but the terrains not that bad, especially now with my new boots. I don’t know how far into the wild I got exactly. I walked for a couple of hours so a few miles at least, but I found this beautiful spot by this little pond with this little waterfall, sunlight streaming through the trees. I set up camp there and slept under the stars for a few nights. And with being by the pond I can actually see the sky—it wasn’t blocked out by the treetops.

My god, the stars. I guess I haven’t looked up in a while because I was shocked by how many there were. I mean, there hasn’t been light pollution in six years, so I think probably most of the sky in the whole country is like this, but I guess I’ve never really looked. I wish I knew something about the constellations. I know the big dipper and Orion‘s belt and the little dipper and I think I found Polaris? Although I don’t know, is it even the right time of year to see Polaris? Can you see it all year round? Can you see it from the hemisphere I’m in?

I don’t know. Clearly I don’t know anything at all about the night sky. But it does make me wonder…you know, are there any other people up there on those other planets somewhere amongst the stars? I think—I think we were pretty close to actually, you know, exploring space. We got people up there at least, even if they just you know, spun around a bit and came back. But that in of itself…I mean, that felt insurmountable when I was younger. So who knows what we could’ve accomplished with more time.

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But it’s a really nice thought—that we’re not alone in the universe. Not in a god way or any kind of higher power way, just…it’s lonely. All of it.

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