It wasn't until I was up in the mountains looking at the night sky that I finally understood constellations. I'd seen stars at night, and could recognize the patterns of the big ones, like Orion, the big and little dippers, and Cassiopeia. But why did the ancients connect those particular stars? At night in the mountains, you could see the vague haze of distant starlight surrounding the constellations, indicating that this group of stars went together somehow. It was a true revelation.