The Work of Wishing

It is 2 am and I am on my roof, staring at the night sky and listening to the wind in the trees. I climbed the ladder using only a small headlamp, a blanket tucked under one arm. Nobody knows I am up here. It isn’t the first time I have done this, and I suspect it won’t be the last. I will probably be climbing onto roofs, walking out to beaches, finding open fields, or lying in the middle of empty roads in the middle of the night in August when I am 85.

My attempt at a night sky photo and trying to capture the Perseids in 2026.

Not every year. But often enough that, like turning a page on a calendar, the arrival of the Perseids has become one of the ways I notice time passing. Of all the annual meteor showers, the Perseids are usually my favorite. I don’t know why. Maybe it is because, at times, there can be upwards of a hundred chunks of burning space rock flying through the sky in an hour, and that feels like magic.

The kind of magic where you make so many wishes that you begin to forget what you have wished for. The kind of magic that knows how futile it is to wish upon a flaming rock for something and still makes you climb onto the roof in the dark so you can do it.

When you are young, the wishes are simple. They are playful. They are joyful. Then, somewhere along the way, the wishes become serious. They become philosophical. You start wishing for the things you are not sure how to name, the things you have been working toward for years without fully understanding that you were working toward them.

The true wishes.

The ones you keep making, hoping that eventually the universe will decide you have been specific enough, or perhaps worthy enough, to receive them.

A bright streak flashes across the sky, trailing light behind it and holding for a second longer than the others. I give this wish to someone else, someone I know is asleep soundly in their bed. 

It doesn’t seem right to hold on to all these chances.

I have already wished for love. For peace. For a happy year ahead. Now, as the smaller shooting stars flicker across the sky, I wish for things I know will take everything in me to make happen. Things I have been building toward for large parts of my life without fully knowing it.

The wish escapes my lips without any real form or cohesion. It doesn’t need words. Surely the universe knows what I am asking by now. I have asked for it on a hundred different flaming rocks. I have whispered it into waterfalls and thrown it into fountains on coins. I have written it in lines upon lines in journals. I have built action plans around it. I have worked hard toward achieving it. I have tried letting it happen naturally.

And still, sometimes, it remains elusive.

Perhaps it is elusive because my definition of it has changed so much.

Perhaps that is what the universe keeps throwing back at me.

You cannot have what you cannot name.

One of these days, I might get what I wish for.

Or perhaps I already have, and simply changed the question.

The Memory of a Shooting Star

Memories of the Perseids come quickly. Some are bright and lingering. Others are short, fast, gone before I can fully place them. As a child, I am lying in the field at my grandparents’ place, looking up. There is perhaps a touch of the northern lights in the sky. I can feel my grandmother and my cousin nearby in the grass, though somehow I feel alone too. Dogs are there, as they seem to be in nearly every version of my life. Sleeping beside me. Guarding me. Wandering somewhere nearby.

This is not one memory so much as a collection of them layered over one another. I am a child, a teenager, an adult. The years have folded together until I cannot separate them. The threads have become a single tapestry, and I know there is something deeper woven into it, but I cannot pull it apart without unraveling the whole thing.

There was the time with Paul, when we had first started dating, when I ran out into the road in front of his place and made him lie down on the warm blacktop so we could see the stars.

Everything felt new then. Magical and beautiful.

I felt like the world was full of love and I was bursting at the seams with it, sparks of joy radiating out from me in every direction.

The light pollution was terrible. We could hardly see anything. But it didn't matter. We were lying in the middle of the road in front of his little bungalow, across from a farmer’s field, surrounded by the smell of dry grass and warm asphalt.

That was enough magic for one night.

Hart's Pass Area - looking west toward Washington Pass and Mount Baker (behind the cloud)

Years later, I would find myself camping at Hart’s Pass, one of my favorite places in the world. The road climbs higher into the mountains until the landscape becomes something more spare and severe. Depending on the year, the ride can be a little sketchy. Once you reach the saddle that is Hart’s Pass proper, though, the views make the trouble worthwhile. Alpine blueberries and huckleberries grow in overlapping patches along the little creeks. The Pacific Crest Trail passes through here in its final miles before the Canadian border. Hikers appear and disappear into the landscape, sometimes needing a ride or a little food, and trail angels wait for them.

Usually I am not there during the Perseids.

One year I was.

I stayed awake late into the morning, watching the sky while the darkness slowly began to thin. Eventually, the eastern horizon started to warm, and the stars disappeared one by one. I finally fell asleep. 

The sky at Hart's Pass at night.... the sun begins to warm the sky to the east.

There are other memories.

Being on the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, where I saw only one meteor, bright enough to make me stop and wonder whether it was actually a meteor or an airplane. I decided it was a meteor because I needed it to be.

A year later, I was along the Savannah River in Georgia. Living there was the first time I really experienced fireflies, thousands of them blinking themselves into existence in the darkness. It felt like the ground was sending its own sparks upward in reply.

One summer, I was trying to escape my own mind and the upheaval of the world, and I found myself sleeping on a beach in Monterey, California, only a mile or so from my perfectly good bed. I had forgotten about the meteor shower.

I was lying in the sand, crying and staring at the sky when I noticed them. The stars felt familiar. A few shot across the darkness, and something in me settled enough that I could finally sleep. The next morning, a passerby stopped when they saw me.

“You fell asleep out here?”

I told them I must have fallen asleep watching the stars.

“Oh, the Perseids?”

“Yah... those.”

I faked remembering that it was that time of year. I walked back to my little studio flat thinking about how strange it was that I had forgotten the Perseids. Only a few years earlier, I had been a doe-eyed teenager making wishes on shooting stars, believing that wanting something badly enough might be enough to make it appear.

Now I knew better. Or at least I thought I did.

The Magic Lingers

Tonight, a low fog is rolling in. There is no moon, but the haze has softened the sky enough that the smaller shooting stars are difficult to see. I still imagine they are there. 

A few years ago, I was in a dark place emotionally, and I remember telling someone that I was looking ‘for the magic’. The kind that makes wishes on shooting stars and dances in the streets. I thought I was looking for some external thing. A sign. A feeling. Proof that the world could still surprise me. 

Maybe it isn't magic at all.

Maybe it is simply the willingness to stop long enough to imagine that something different might be possible.

During the day, I make plans. I analyze. I calculate. I figure out what needs to happen and how much work it will take. I build the battle plans. I make lists. I put one foot in front of the other and try to turn the things I want into things I can actually reach.

But there has to be room for something else. There has to be room to want something before you know how to build it. Room to hope without knowing whether hope is reasonable. Room to lie on a roof at 2 am in the middle of August, wrapped in a blanket, watching pieces of a burning universe disappear into the darkness.

The fog may hide the smaller stars.

I know they are still there.

And for tonight, that is enough.

The daytime is for the planning and the analyzing, for figuring out the battle plans and doing the work.

But in mid-August, at 2 am, on the roof of my house, watching the night sky, that is for asking the universe for things.

That is for wishing.

That is for dreaming about the future.

And maybe, for a little while, believing that the things I cannot yet name are already on their way.

---

BOOK: An Astronauts Guide to Life On Earth - Col. Chris Hadfield  I happen to have a signed copy that I picked up while seeing him perform with his band of fellow astronauts a few years back. I love the way the author writes about his life, his training, his perceptions of the world. I really liked the calm 'Canadian' mind and way of thinking, it shifted some of my perspectives on personal achievement.

SONG: The Only Way - Ellis Paul

Ellis Paul was a random find one year for me when I was in the military, and I fell in love. It hit something in my soul. The right level of Americana, folk, everything. This song was the response to 9/11, and while the people around me were screaming for revenge.... I wasn't. This felt right. It is part of why I was crying on the beach in Monterey.

Additionally, have a look at this Substack to follow up with my thoughts on the Futility of Wishing on Stars.

---

Thank you for reading my post. This post/essay, like many of the ones I write, is a blend of my personal experiences, travel, memories, stories, and shared conversations. These solely represent myself and my opinions and thoughts. When it involves personal friends I have given them nicknames unless they have given explicit permission to use their given name. There are times that I am able to pull from what I wrote down in my journals at the time an event happened, others I am trying to recall memories that have been altered by brain injuries and a lifetime of simply living. I may not always get it right, so please forgive me for some unintentional variations.

I always welcome feedback and thoughts on my posts. Please feel free to send me an email or comment below.

Love from the road,

Nic & Rally