As a child, the night sky never really interested me when I was growing up, and my family never really said muh about it to me.  Although it seems that the older I get, the more fascinating the night sky ans stars are.  Living in Mont Belvieu, which is a somewhat rural town located a few miles east of Baytown, we have some pretty dark nights despite the many refineries that surround the gas rich town.  Here lately I have found myself cranking up the hot tub many nights, and just relaxing and staring up at the stars.  Now granite, there are a select number of stars that are visible to the human eye from my backyard, but they are clear enough to see some of the bigger constellations, and my favorite the satellites slowly making their way around the world.  Besides the occasional sitting in the hot tub, there is a memory of stars I have from this past deer season.  I can remember all of the stars like it was yesterday because of how bright they seemed compared to here at home.

After selling his ranch in Beeville Texas, my uncle got on a deer lease in Incinal Texas, which is just Northeast of Laredo on the border of Mexico.  Last deer season I had the privilege of going down there several times.  And it was not until my fifth and final time to go that my cousin an I looked up as we were sitting around the fire, only to notice thousands of bright shinning stars lighting up the night sky.  The amount of stars in the sky was just unreal compared to anywhere around home.  We became so interested that we downloaded an app that supposedly shows you what constellation is what when you point your phone at the sky.  Whether the app gave us an accurate reading or not, we don't know, but it still kept us in awe at the amount and brightness of stars.  Even knowing we had to get up at five the next morning to go hunting, we still stayed up until around eleven just looking at the stars and watching shooting stars.

The sad thing is that I have been to Canada and even some U.S. states that are very rural and not full of bright city lights, I just never paid attention to the stars.  Now that I realize how interesting the stars really are, I wish I could go back in time and take the time to look at the stars in those far away places.  Thanks to that one late Laredo night, I would love to go back to Canada to see the night sky, especially the northern lights which are another phenomenon itself.  We do have a farm in the small town of Raywood, which is only thirty minutes from my house, but it is away from all of the city lights.  I may have to make a trip up there this week just to admire the stars.