"Out of the blue and into the black
They give you this, but you paid for that
And once you're gone, you can never come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
So says Neil Young in a song with a harmonica solo so heavy, hard and soulful it could cut a diamond. That's "Hey Hey, My My" for those not in the know. I first became acquainted with it reading Stephen King's "It," which remains one of my very favorite books.
It always makes me think of passing out of our blue sky and into the black beyond, the waters of the cosmic ocean that teasingly lap our tiny planetary shore.
This past weekend, I found myself in Randolph County, far in the northeastern corner of the state. It was my cousin Marcus and I, the Arkansas Travelers, at it again. What were they there to do, you ask?
We were laying eyes on a visitor from the black beyond.
Settle down before you call Special Agent Fox Mulder. It's not that exciting.
On second thought, give Fox a call anyway. It's been a while and he and I need to talk. But that's a whole other column.
Did you know that a meteorite crashed into the Black River bottoms in Randolph County in 1859? True story. That rock is now on display for all to see on the lawn of the Randolph County Courthouse. Seeing that bit of alien stone is on the Arkansas Bucket List on which Marcus and I work so assiduously to check boxes. We have at least one thing in each of the 75 counties, and that's Randolph County's thing.
That's such a small-town Arkansas thing to do, really. To take a meteorite and put it on the courthouse lawn.
This probably sounds weird to you, Faithful Reader, but I think about space a lot. I think about how we've barely gotten out there, and what could be out there in the billion and billions of star systems that comprise our galaxy alone. Sometimes I get restless on this pale blue dot upon which I find myself bound, and I want out. My curiosity gets all lit up and I lose myself in thought, feeling the universe beckoning.
And as I read in a comic book once, "when universes beckon, who of us could say no?"
But I ain't Jeff Bezos. I don't have billions of dollars or an indisputably phallic spaceship to launch myself out of the blue and into the black. So I guess I'm stuck where I am. I'll have to take what comes to me, like when a meteorite falls from the sky.
And you know, maybe the naysayers and the SETI-haters are right, and we really are all alone out here. Maybe there is only the dark and empty wilderness of midnight blue, that bright but unforgiving cold where Orion hunts eternally.
Maybe we're it.
What a depressing thought that is.
I opened with classic rock, so I reckon I'll close the same way. With "The Last Resort" by The Eagles. "Since there is no more new frontier, we have got to make it here."
Unless we're Jeff Bezos, anyway. But then, even he came back.
Maybe it won't be that way forever though. Who knows?
Maybe one day I'll get out.
Maybe we all will.
At least, those of us who want to.
Caleb Baumgardner is a local attorney. He can be reached at [email protected].