The thermometer read eighteen degrees below zero, yet I chose to sleep on the porch as usual. In the evenings, my most familiar sight was the stars. Though a mere sprinkle of twinkling dots, I had grown so accustomed to them that their absence brought loneliness and ennui.
It snowed all night, hiding every star. My roommate and I, each wrapped in a quilt, sat in opposite corners of the porch, chatting. She pointed into the distance and exclaimed, "Look, Venus is rising!" I looked up and saw only a lamp around a bend in the mountain path. Smiling, I pointed to a tiny light on the opposite mountain. "And there is Jupiter!"
More and more lights came into view as we pointed here and there. Hurricane lamps flickering in the pine forest created a star-studded sky. With snowflakes blurring the line between forest and sky, the countless lamplights easily passed for stars.
Lost in this make-believe world, the lights seemed to drift up from the ground. With these illusory stars fixed overhead, I was spared the effort of tracing their positions when I awoke from dreams in the dead of night.
Thus, I found consolation even on a lonely, snowy night.