The headlights sweep the unlit damn, and perception means nothing. The reflection of the water, echo of the music, the quiet murmur and shake of the engine propels us through the midnight murkiness of the water and my senses are all blurred.
I crane my neck straight back. I wish the vinyl boat seat would recline, but this will do. I'm getting vertigo from the sheer distance of the stars. My brain unable to make sense of the depth, possibly aided by the lack of blood flow to my brain. The division between what is the edge of our galaxy and what is a cloud is blurred.
My phone has no reception. For this small amount of time, I was free from the world, and I will never feel that liberated again.
Any other average day, I don't have the willpower to put the phone down for long if I have bars. It's like breathing, every few minutes refreshing my Twitter feed. Netflix is on, but my face is in my phone and before I know what is happening, I'm already 3 pages down on Reddit.
It's perfect though, instead of this being my portal into everything that is terrible in the world, it only has a few small functionalities. My phone no longer brings news of Trump, my phone is only my compass and sextant.
The human brain likes to find patterns and group things. I start to quickly pick out stars that vaguely look like they should be something. I hold up my star mapping application and point the camera toward the sky, and highlighted is Gemini, Virgo, and Ursa Major.
People talk of the golden hour, shortly after the sun appears or shortly before it disappears, where you have magical lighting for pictures. To me, the golden hour is not long after sunset. You can still pick out images and see colors, but all colors have a darker hue to them. They bathe in shadows, but still reflect light.
I stare at a branch dressed in green, back lit by the stars. I want to get a photograph of this moment to share with other people, but stars were always bashful photography subjects. Never quite letting you focus on the entire scene, especially when using a camera phone.
There had been a live band playing on the dam. A greatest hits catalog of classic rock, Tom Petty, Creedance, Stones, and Fleetwood Mac. They had wrapped, so of course, we switched to Pink Floyd on the boat stereo.
In this moment, the breeze whistles, the music swells, my drink is sweating, a light fog hangs on the surface of the water, and everything is perfect.
