I looked up from the hammock and saw the crescent of the waxing moon still very visible in the bright blue sky overhead. Watching the moon above me, I had a sudden sense of my place amid the mysterious inner workings of the universal clock. As I rocked in my hammock, the earth was spinning like a giant gyroscope as it orbited the sun. Out there beyond the blue, the distant invisible planets and the Milky Way moved with us.

It never seemed so grand and mysterious in a classroom. Maybe teachers ought to approach astronomy from a hammock on a deserted beach as well as from the lenses of giant telescopes. The earlier in life we know we are part of something magical and mysterious, the better off we are.

-A Salty Piece of Land, p. 433