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The writer Craig Childs is a wanderer and a searcher.

In his books, he throws himself into slot canyons and

high plateaus looking for water and ancient ruins and the hidden rhythms of the natural world.

His latest book is a reverie of the night sky, and it's also a field guide to finding that sky

in the age of light. In the book, Childs asks us if we

remember being stopped cold by a brilliant night. And he told us about his first time, which he

says came without warning. He was on a camping trip with his mom and a boyfriend. I remember it clearly

because he had an older white Dodge pickup and he put a whole mattress in the back of it.

And then when we got to the forest that afternoon, he took out the mattress and just plopped it down

on the ground and that was going to be our bed.

When night fell, they put a lot of blankets on it and then they put me under the blankets and then they disappeared.

They could have been 20 feet away. I was little.

But I was afraid of the dark.

And it was dark.

Ponderosa pine forest.

And no moon.

Just black, black dark.

The dark seemed malevolent.

Or worse, it felt like nothing at all.

No mom out there, no boyfriend, no pickup.

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