A Tale of Two Hemispheres

As a child, my sense of belonging in a place came from locating the Big Dipper and charting my relation to it. While living in New Zealand, the Southern Cross became my identifier. When asked about our trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, a certain memory related to stars comes to mind as my favourite. We took one starry evening to relax on the top deck of the Galapagos Legend as one of the naturalist guides pointed out the constellations with a red laser. Reclined in my chair and draped with a blanket, I realized that for the first time in my life, both hemispheres filled the sky. To the left: the northern hemisphere glimmered in the darkness. To the right, the southern. It came as no surprise when, with both of my identifying marks in the sky, I felt completely at home on the equator.