The night sky is a paradox to me. It is comforting to be out here among the gilded willows and the babbling creek. The serenity contained in the stars seems to flow right down the Milky Way into the creek. As Spanish Creek in southwest Montana flows under me, I am able to absorb that serenity like oxygen in my lungs. Each breath becoming deeper and slower as I attempt to comprehend the vast beauty of the scene that lies before me. It is comforting to be sure, but also a bit unsettling as those attempts at comprehension fail to understand just exactly how huge the universe that I am peering into actually is. The spiral arm that we see from earth is just a segment of one of the arms of the Milky Way. From Earth we can see roughly .000003% of the stars in the Milky Way! We can see the Andromeda Galaxy too and it is larger than the Milky Way. There are potentially millions if not billions of other galaxies out there, each one containing untold stars and planets. Whew, I should just focus on what I can understand. The comforting sounds of the creek at my feet, the refreshing night air, the soothing colors of Autumn painted on the willows, and the calming myriad of stars dancing across the night sky.