Lying under a blanket of stars with my dad on my mind

I’m writing beneath a blanket of stars.

I’m on the boat again. No storms in sight this time, just a few stray flashes of heat lightning over Mount Nebo. I’m thinking about my dad and how I should’ve written about him in last week’s column. You know, Father’s Day and all that.

Maybe I forgot Dad because he’s not here. He’s out beneath the stars too, somewhere around North Dakota last I heard.

A few years back, my father started bicycling across the country. He does it in 40-day bursts; camps in city parks and baseball fields way out in the middle of nowhere. This time, he said he didn’t want to go; he just felt like it was something he had to do.

So off he went, the same way he’d go camping on his own when I was a kid, hiking up the Ozark Highland Trail until he was out of sight and Mom would put our minivan in reverse, headed home again.

I used to think Dad’s solitary camping trips were weird. A lot of people still don’t get his biking excursions. No AC? No showers? He must be crazy!

People might think I was crazy if they saw me right now, lying flat on my pontoon boat’s bench, staring up at the stars. I’m way out in the middle of Lake Dardanelle, over close to the Arkansas River channel. It’s quiet. The sky is clear.

It takes some doing to get away from the world. Even out here in my boat, I can still hear the interstate if the wind blows in from the north. The Russellville “city lights” radiate to my south, a faint glow like a winter sunrise. But, if I lie flat back on the bench and let the gunwales block my peripherals, all I can see is sky.

I wonder if Dad sees the same thing.

He’s the one who first showed me the stars. He didn’t always camp alone. We had a spot on Piney Creek we went to for years. On cool, clear nights, we’d leave the tent in the bag and unroll our sleeping mats on the rocky bank. It didn’t take Dad long to teach me what he knew of astronomy: Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Dog Star, etc. …

The science wasn’t what was important, though. It was the wonder. The falling stars and satellites that ignited my mind like nothing had before. When I got back to school, I was amazed to find that most of my friends had never star

gazed. They’d never looked up much at all.

Lying here in my boat, I realize that it’s been a while since I’ve turned my eyes heavenward. Too long. Maybe that’s why I’m out here. This last year has been a whirlwind. Two novels, two kids and too many trips to count. But the days get longer in the summer. Things slow down enough to wonder again.

Like Dad’s reluctance about leaving, I didn’t really want to get the boat out of the dock. It’s a lot of work. Ropes and oil and depth finder checks. The lake at night is kind of scary too. But the view — those same stars that first ignited my imagination, the same sky my father is out there under somewhere — is always worth it.