This past weekend we headed off to Osoyoos for my sister’s super epic 30th birthday finale. On our last night, we decided to flick the switch on the patio lights and look up at the stars.

To say it was spectacular might not fully capture how incredibly vast the stars looked that night. It just so happened we all caught a glimpse of a shooting start within 3 minutes of darkness. With the lights on, you can’t see much. But turn them off and it’s like a whole other world.

We saw the Milky Way.

The Big Dipper.

My good friend Orion was hidden for the first time – usually, whenever I look up he’s the only constellation I can recognize.

So we did what any group of people celebrating a 30th birthday would do, we poured a glass of wine and took some blankets to an open field to lay under the stars. I was quite ecstatic because ‘lay under the stars’ is on my new 29×30 list! Boom. Checked.

I learned that fast-moving star-like things are actually satellites. My brother-in-law has a really cool app called SkyView that will identify stars, planets, satellites, and constellations so we were able to know that the bright one we saw was actually Jupiter and one of the satellites was actually the international space station.

It was a stunning and peaceful night. Laying under the stars really makes you feel quite small in the grand scheme of the universe. We’re just tiny little specks in a huge gigantic galaxy. It was a good reminder to take a breath; what feels huge to us is really quite small. Sometimes when you stop and take a look around away from the noise, distractions, and lights, there’s a really beautiful and big world out there!

Have you ever taken a moment to look at the stars? What is your favourite place to stargaze?