I’ve always felt that cities were too crowded. They have too much cement, too many cars and horns and sirens. They’re never truly dark. During my first week here in Iowa, I attended a bonfire out in the prairie. It felt so calm, so quiet. Beyond the welcoming glow of the campfire, I was surrounded by proper darkness, full of rustling prairie grasses, crickets, and, beyond the smaller noises, silence.

And then I looked up.

In the city, no one looks up anymore. You don’t miss much, maybe three to five stars if you’re lucky. Here it was different. I had never seen so many stars in my life. I could even see the Milky Way stretching itself across the sky. It’s hard to truly grasp how large the sky is. What you see is nothing, an insignificant fraction of a whole that could quite possibly go on forever.

I will keep the memory of that night’s sky in the prairie with me for the rest of my life. It felt impossibly large, and in turn I felt impossibly small. It also felt like it was welcoming me home, to this place where I was meant to be. As I made friends and ate s’mores around the fire, the sky twinkled up above, much more breathtaking than the glow-in-the-dark stickers on my bedroom ceiling. Whenever I walk places at night now, I always look up.

The stars will never cease to impress me.