My vehicle was parked about a mile away at the end of a little traveled road, and the air was still and soundless. To the north of me, not far off, was the remote corner of a nearby Indian reservation. Pointing me in that direction was the North Star; not the brightest star, but certainly the most important in the night’s heaven.

I found it quickly by drawing a line through the so-called pointer stars in the Big Dipper. The North Star (or Polaris) has been used to guide travelers through the millennia.

If you were to stand on the North Pole, the North Star would be directly overhead. Elsewhere, by observing its height above the horizon, you can
determine your latitude. For instance at 45 degrees north latitude (halfway
between the Equator and the North Pole) Polaris is 45 degrees above the
horizon. Or, if you happen to be near Mexico City at 20 degrees latitude,
the North Star would be 20 degrees above the horizon.

Polaris is the central point around which the heavens rotate. That’s because Polaris is lined up with the North Pole or, more descriptively, Polaris is aligned with the Earth’s axis of rotation. As the Earth rotates, Polaris appears to stay in one place while all of the other stars rotate around it.

In mid-winter, if you were to step outside and check the Big Dipper each hour as the evening passes, you would see it move around the North Star in a counterclockwise direction. As the evening hours blend into early morning , the dipper will arch up higher in the sky, its cup gradually tipping more and more toward the horizon, eventually spilling its cosmic contents.

When you find Polaris, you’ve found another constellation. Polaris is on the tail of the Little Dipper. Neither the Little Dipper nor the Big Dipper are constellations, per se. They are star groupings (astronomers called them asterisms) that are part of larger constellations. The Big Dipper is a part of Ursa Major (the Great Bear) and the Little Dipper is a part of Ursa Minor (the Lesser Bear).

The ancient Greeks clearly had an inventive bent when they saw a bear in the stars that make up Ursa Major. But the Greeks weren’t the only ones with such an imagination. The Chinese and even the northeastern Indians of North America saw a bear when they looked in the northern skies.

Like Orion, the Big Dipper can be used to identify other constellations. As you say know, by using the pointer stars of the Big Dipper you can extend a line out to find the North Star. If you extend the same line even farther past the North Star, you’ll reach a constellation shaped like a house with a peaked roof. The line points to the peak of the roof. You have found Cepheus (the King).

After you find the King, then the queen of the sky, Cassiopeia, is alongside. Look just beyond Cepheus, farther along and slightly above the same line extending out from the North Star, for the “W” shaped constellation of Cassiopeia. The “W” forms the chair upon which the queen is gracefully draped. These and other constellations you can find using the Big Dipper are
illustrated in the following chart.

It was about then, while I was admiring Cassiopeia’s seated form that I began noticing the cold. I had lost track of time standing there with head craned skyward, enveloped in van Gogh’s dream world. The old broken-down snowmobile, the Beast— and any plans to dispatch it — were a distant memory. In fact, as I thought about it, the track was finished enough, and the race could go on.

It was time to move on. Cares gone and feeling very much refreshed, I turned towards my vehicle’s location and glided down a long gentle incline underneath a sky alive with stars dancing to and fro.

Postscript

The race went off the next day just fine. There was, however, one obstacle on the course. Racers had to make a detour around the Beast, who remained unmoving in the middle of the trail where I had left him the night before.

Late that day, after the race, a mechanically minded friend of mine named Barefoot helped me get the Beast running again. We hauled it to his apartment which he shared with three other college buddies. Somehow, we got the machine through the front door and into living room, where Barefoot proceeded to tear it apart and re-build the engine.

I had to hand it to Barefoot. He knew how to pick his roommates. Over the next couple of weeks, they would wander through now and then, stepping over various snow machine parts strewn across the floor, and none of them seemed to think that a snowmobile in the living room was anything out of the ordinary.

Ron Watters couldn’t be happier when it’s cold and snowy. He is the author
of eight books including Winter Tales and Trails and Ski Camping. Working to recognize good outdoor writing by others, he is the founder and chairman
of the National Outdoor Book Awards, the largest book award program in the
outdoor world. He and his wife, and cross country ski companion, Kathy
live in Pocatello, Idaho with Lizzy, an Australian Shepherd, and Scrapper
and Annie, their two geriatric cats.