Moo-Mishaps at Midnight

Watchman Towers at Zion National Park

I grew up in Los Angeles, where stargazing wasn’t so much a pastime as it was an impossibility. The city lights erased the heavens like an Executive Assistant cleans a white board.

Now, older and self-exiled to quieter places, I stare at stars like I’m trying to make up for lost time. Sometimes I swear the Big Dipper is branded into my retinas. I’ll happily lose sleep chasing the Milky Way with my camera, because honestly, what else is worth stumbling around half-awake for the next day?

Oxbow Bend - Teton National Park

But every time I hear the phrase “Milky Way,” I tilt my head like a confused cocker spaniel, wondering what oddity its owner is filming next for a TikTok. “Milky Way?” Really? Sure, it’s kind of milky. But still—who thought this was the best possible name? We can do better.

Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park

The term goes back to the Greeks—Galaxias Kyklos, the “milky circle”—and then the Romans, who Latin-ized it into Via Lactea, the “milky road.” Both versions hint at spilled milk. To be precise, spilled breast milk. (Imagine being the historian who had to keep a straight face while writing that down.)

The Grand Teton - Teton National Park

Other cultures, mercifully, took a different angle. In Asia, it’s the Silver River or the Sky River. In India, it’s the Ganges of the Sky. In Southern Africa, some call it the Backbone of Night—which feels way cooler than “Oops, Someone Spilled the Milk.” Central Asia went with Straw Road, Finland and the Arctic got poetic with Bird’s Path, and the Irish really nailed it: Way of the White Cow.

The Grand Teton - Teton National Park

And then there’s the science: just a casual 100 to 400 billion stars swirling together in a galactic spiral, each one throwing light across incomprehensible gulfs of space.

Cedar Breaks National Monument

God made each of those stars. Let that sink in for a second. Billions upon billions of suns, arranged in such impossible harmony, and we call it the “Milky Way” because somebody once thought of spilled dairy.

Me? I’ll call it Star River or Path of the White Buffalo for now. But really, what do you think it should be called?

Somewhere in the Uinta Mountains, Utah