An Astronomical Moment on my Morning Walk

I was on my daily walk this morning, walking due south along a suburban street in Spanish Fork. It was about 6:30 am. The sun hadn’t come up yet so it was still dark. I happened to look to my left, and I saw Venus rising over the mountains to the east. When I looked to my right, I could see Mars setting. And then I turned my face forward and looked up and and I saw Sirius directly in front of me. In that moment I felt … “triangulated,” like I was attached by strings to those celestial objects and pinned like a photograph on a TV detective’s cosmic cork board. I was moving at a fairly brisk pace, but I may as well have been on a giant treadmill, with the Earth rolling beneath me as I walked in place.