falling stars

Growing up in a unitarian household we didn't have many rituals or typically religious traditions , but what we did have helped to define many of my future beliefs. When I was five my family moved into a small rural village, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The one amazing part of living ten miles away from the closest town was how beautiful everything around us was, especially the stars. The first night in our new house my mom called me down from my half unpacked room and told me to follow her outside. As we stood in our back field I followed my mothers gaze attempting to figure out why I was standing outside at midnight, and what I saw stunned me, there were tons of shooting stars, the Perseid.
Over the years we made it a tradition to go outside for every meteor shower, every eclipse, and even every time one of the planets was really bright. It started as only standing outside watching until we became cold; but eventually we found that the meteor showers could change dramatically throughout the night, and we didn't want to miss a thing. As time went on we began bringing fold up chairs, blankets and most importantly a nice big mug of hot coco. Many meteor showers started later on in the night so we would all go to bed early, and my dad would set an alarm for around one the next morning. we would all wake up roll out of bed, put on our many layers of cloths, grab blankets, the chairs, and the coco. As my brother and I got older we could occasionally add some coffee to our hot chocolate, though it sounds gross it is amazing, and we were always happy to get our coffee/coco. On occasion if it was really cold out I would put on these huge wool socks and try to make my feet big enough to fit into my dads boots, they always seemed warmer than my shoes. The blankets we took outside were the biggest we owned and usually either my mom or dad would be loaded down with a stack of ten, sometimes more. As we sat down to watch the show we would place our chairs in a circle so we could each watch part of the sky, and eventually we would all turn to the direction that seemed to have the most.
I remember one meteor shower in particular because it was the most active one I had ever seen, usually meteor showers don't last too long and we have time to go back inside while its still dark and try to get some more sleep, but this shower seemed to just keep going. We were so impressed by the intensity of the shower that my dad decided to get the camcorder and record it. we didn't realize until later that taping a meteor shower is near impossible and you usually end up with a lot of random voices. Another year after I had gotten my trampoline for a birthday we thought that the typical chairs were boring, so we all piled on my trampoline and lay there watching the show for the night. These events did not happen too often, and
I did sometimes wish they could occur every night, but the fact that they were sparse made them all the more exciting.
Though meteor showers and hot coco do not seem like they could add up to a belief system, for me, along with a general respect for nature, they did. As I grew older I began to think about all those fundamental questions that many children are curious about, what is outer space really?, where does it end?, how did it start? I wanted an answer for everything, so in my early teens I began to think about what I believed in. The respect and love I acquired for the natural world as a child came into play, and I found Wicca, it just seemed to fit into my life. It was a religion that focused on the seasons, on astronomy, and on everything I loved about living (literally) in the middle of nowhere.