William Marvel: The Big Dipper

The first celestial configuration I was able to recognize was the Big Dipper. Two sides of the forest that borders our field converge a little west of north, pointing directly to those seven stars, which I always notice when they are hanging right above the angle of the treetops. My father introduced me to them one night in the 1950s.

The Big Dipper and Polaris were not the only stars he recognized, I’m sure, but they were the only ones he ever pointed out to me, perhaps because the chairs in which we used to sit out back were always positioned toward them. He placed them that way, I think, because when he was a boy he and his father often sat by the barn of an evening, under the same stars. He mentioned that one night. He said he always associated the Big Dipper with home, and to me home was South Conway, so I assumed he meant the barn on Davis Hill, two houses away; it never occurred to me to ask if he was referring to the one in Orleans, on Cape Cod.