Race to the Fallen Peanut Shell - Ansley McCoy

A FLORIDA WINTER WONDERLAND

NICANOR VERGARA

Are you truly happy?

It was around two-thirty in the morningand I still couldn’t sleep, so I decided I wanted to go for a walkon a chilly Florida night. It was thirty-six degrees when I checked the weather before I got dressed. An average winter day up north, but a rare moment to cherish in the South.

I put on the thickest clothes I had to make sure I wouldn’t die, but also relished in the fact that it was one of the rare moments I could wear them. Clad in my thickest jeans, a hoodie, and a winter jacket, I set out for the quiet roads of my small college town.The usually bustling main road was empty, save for the occasional car or two passing by. The sound of their cold, metallic bodies cutting the cold wind, accompanied by the soft hum of their tires on the pavement served as the soundtrack for my aimless expedition.I looked up at the clear earlymorning sky at the stars and gave myself a goal: I would find a nice spot to look at the stars.

However, the solace of starlight cannot be found on main roads, or even the vacant grounds on campus. No, I would have to find some place for myself. So, I walked. My shoes quietly rubbed against the sidewalks with every step. That sound was replaced with dirt and grass crunching beneath me when I stumbled across a dried-out pond behind some apartment buildings. It seemed like the perfect place to enjoy the view. The treetops ended at right around the place where the basin began to incline. However, as I started to trek downwards, I noticed a couple of ducks standing in the middle of the empty pond. As nice as the view would’ve been, I didn’twant to fend off angry ducks for it. So, I went back up the basin and started walking again.

The humble sounds of my footsteps disturbing the earth were replaced once more with shoes on pavement. They tapped and scratched against the ground as I again wandered to find a nice spot to enjoy this cold Florida night.That pleasurable cacophony wasreplaced with the scratchy symphony of gravel as I walked through the school’s horticultural field. At least, that’s what I thought it was. Lining the gravel path was an assortment of young pine trees and low-lying shrubbery that could easily be mistaken for weeds. However, I found a picnic table tucked away in a dark corner of this meek observatory and found my spot.

I sat down on the weathered wooden bench, which was far sturdier than I expected it to be. I rested my back and elbows on the table, creating a recliner with what I had, andlooked up.

Starlight peeking through an ocean of white and orange streetlights. The brightest stars of the constellations Leo and Gemini greeting me with warm gazes. With them, Orion’s faithful hounds, Canis Major and Canis Minor.

The gentle shifting of leaves in the cold wind. The same wind that carried the piercing scent of wood to my nose and nibbled at my face and hands. I looked up at the brightest star in our night sky, Sirius, belonging to the Great Dog, an awe. Hundreds of lightyears away two stars orbit around one another in a galactic dance, yet all I see is the twinkling of a little star.

Above it, theLesser Dog, whose brightest star Procyon paled in comparison to the size and shine of its brother. How sad it must be to be compared to that greatness. Gemini’s twin heads, Castor and Pollux, shone before me as well. They seem so close together, but their relationship is only an illusion. In reality, they are lightyears apart from one another, gliding through space on their own solitary journeys.Lastly,Leo, the lion in the sky. Lions are typically associated with courage and tenacity, a sort of feral regality. However, the few stars that I could see of that mighty lion’s body were dim. Like they could fade away any second.

On that weathered bench in a small forest in my tiny college town, the night swept me up in its cold embrace and whispered nothingness into my ear.

The eveningasked me, “who are you?” I am no one, just another twinkling star in the night sky. “Then what is your purpose?” I have none, I bear witness to the greatness of others. “Are you content as a bystander?” I don’t want to impose on the magnificent journey of life that others tread. “So, what does that make you?” Nothing. A ghost in the wind merely passingby.

I am just a set of electrical pulses surging though neurons in a suit of molecules passing through space-time. I realized that. At last, I had an answer to the existential nightmare that has been introduced to a god-less world. I finally have an ideaof my placein the grand scheme of things.

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