If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, these are star trails.
They form when a camera stays still long enough to notice what we usually rush past. It holds its breath, holds its place, and lets the Earth turn beneath it. We’re the ones moving, but the long exposure makes it look like the stars are the ones wandering, sweeping their light across the night like they have somewhere gentle to be.
I think that’s why I love them.
Because they prove something I keep forgetting.
That movement doesn’t always look like progress.
Sometimes it looks like staying in one place long enough for the truth to catch up to you.
What I can’t stop staring at is the reflection in the water.
That doubled sky.
That echo of light.
Like the world was so full that it overflowed and spilled itself into the stillness until even the dark had to carry something bright.
There is something almost painfully tender about that.
How the sky didn’t shrink itself or dim itself or apologize for being too much.
It simply became two skies instead of one.
And maybe that is what hit me.
The reminder that even in silence, even when my days feel stuck or small or swallowed by their own shadows, things are shifting.
Healing is shifting.
Grief is shifting.
I am shifting.
Not loudly. Not obviously. But undeniably.
The water didn’t move, but it mirrored the stars anyway.
And some days I feel like that.
Quiet, unmoving, like nothing is changing at all.
But maybe I am reflecting things I can’t see yet.
Maybe the parts of me that feel still are actually catching light I didn’t know was reaching for me.
I stayed out by the water longer than I meant to.
The grass was cold.
The night smelled like winter trying to arrive too early.
And I felt that familiar ache in my chest, the kind that comes from wanting more than I can name, from missing things I can’t explain, from holding hope and exhaustion in the same trembling hand.
But the stars kept tracing their slow arcs across the sky.
They didn’t hurry.
They didn’t need to.
They simply kept going, one thin line at a time, drawing proof of their persistence in the dark.
I think I needed to see that.
Because lately I have been feeling like I am barely moving.
Like I am suspended between worlds, South Dakota and Virginia, past and future, memory and whatever comes next.
But the camera caught movement my eyes couldn’t.
And maybe that is true for my life too.
Maybe I am changing in ways I won’t recognize until later.
Maybe this season is a long exposure.
Slow, quiet, honest.
Capturing shifts I won’t understand until I step back and see the trails.
Maybe you are in one of those seasons too.
If you are, I hope you remember this.
Stillness is not stagnation.
Quiet is not failure.
And even on the nights when you feel like you are holding your breath, the sky is still moving, and so are you.
The Stars Take Note 