Same here … I had those moments of awareness several times when I was a kid learning about all this stuff in school. Together with my background as an Indigenous Canadian (I’m full blooded Ojibway and it’s my first language before English) I was always taught by my elders to stay aware of my place in the universe and existence.
We lived in remote northern Ontario away from cities and towns and the sky was always a deep dark expanse, especially on a moonless night. One of the greatest spectacles I ever witnessed was heading out on the winter ice road near Moosonee on James Bay. My friends and I drove out for fun several miles north for fun. It was February and it was a frigid minus 40, no wind, no clouds, the air perfectly still. We stopped at a bit of a rise in the frozen mushkeg where there were no trees. The sky was so dry, so clear and so unobstructed by anything in the air that we could see every star down to the horizon. At that moment, for an instant realized I wasn’t looking up … I was looking at the universe from the edge of a sphere … it was almost dizzying because if I thought about it too long, I felt as if I were on the edge of a cliff ready to fall off.
Same here … I had those moments of awareness several times when I was a kid learning about all this stuff in school. Together with my background as an Indigenous Canadian (I’m full blooded Ojibway and it’s my first language before English) I was always taught by my elders to stay aware of my place in the universe and existence.
We lived in remote northern Ontario away from cities and towns and the sky was always a deep dark expanse, especially on a moonless night. One of the greatest spectacles I ever witnessed was heading out on the winter ice road near Moosonee on James Bay. My friends and I drove out for fun several miles north for fun. It was February and it was a frigid minus 40, no wind, no clouds, the air perfectly still. We stopped at a bit of a rise in the frozen mushkeg where there were no trees. The sky was so dry, so clear and so unobstructed by anything in the air that we could see every star down to the horizon. At that moment, for an instant realized I wasn’t looking up … I was looking at the universe from the edge of a sphere … it was almost dizzying because if I thought about it too long, I felt as if I were on the edge of a cliff ready to fall off.