When Heaven is Under Our Feet, As Well As Over Our Heads

A story about a camping trip that almost didn't happen, a scorpion, and a night when heaven is under our feet.

"Tell me why we are going camping again?" my husband asked the day before we were supposed to leave on a three-day trip. Tents, sleeping bags, and warm clothing towered in stacks in the living room.

"I know it's going to be cold, but everyone has the time off," I said as I searched for functioning batteries and wondered for the hundredth time why flashlights seemed to disappear into a black hole at our house.

"29 degrees is just a number to our kids," my husband said—so emphatically—I stopped trying to figure out the difference between AA and AAA. "They grew up in the desert. They have no idea how cold that is."

As former canoe guides in northern Minnesota, we both had experienced the numbing chill from the surrounding air, in addition to the deep cold that seeped up from the ground at night. The thought of trying to gather enough cold-weather gear for twelve people—including three small children—did not sound like a relaxing vacation.

We decided to camp in the backyard at our oldest son's house, where people could sleep inside if they chose.

At the fire pit the following night, I skewered a marshmallow, as my six-year-old grandson checked out a constellation app on my phone.

"There's a little animal, Grandma," he said, the phone held high above his head. "I think it's a fox."

"A little bear," I said, turning my marshmallow to brown another side. "Ursa Minor."

"It has a long tail."

"It's also called the Little Dipper." I pointed to the faint stars to show him the shape, but he had already moved to another quadrant in the sky.

"There's a lion."

"Leo." I added a chocolate square to the graham cracker.

"Whoa! A scorpion!"

Several people jumped. "Where's a scorpion?"

My grandson laughed and pointed at the screen. He was no longer aiming the phone at the heavens, but at the ground.

Scorpius hung out in the sky on the other side of the Earth—at the antipodal point—the place on Earth that was diametrically opposite of Arizona. With the phone pointed down, my grandson and I checked out other constellations and planets. Saturn. Mars. Capricorn.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Henry Thoreau had made the comment, not while staring at the galaxies, but at Walden Pond in the winter, after he had dug through a foot of snow and ice to get water to drink. In that "open window," that "quiet parlor of the fishes," he marveled at the heavens above and the heaven below as he lived out daily life.

I gazed at my family—three generations—dressed in layers of long-sleeved flannel and fleece under a clear, moon-lit, Arizona sky. My grandson positioned the phone to stare at the sun beneath our feet.

I squashed my perfectly browned marshmallow until the melted goodness oozed out between the chocolate and graham crackers and knew—at that moment—heaven was beautiful. 

**Curious about your antipodal point? Check it out here.

This post recently appeared in the Ahwatukee Foothills News, The SanTan Sun News, and the East Valley Tribune.