Cosmic Display

When awesome cosmic things settle in the sky on a clear night especially if its clear for 3 nights in a row, well I guess I should pay attention.  As I pulled into the driveway last night to competing lightening and thunder, billowing clouds darker than the darkening sky hurrying from east to west, I finally took real notice of the crescent moon with its two extremely bright trailing planets directly in front of me in the western sky.  Soon the giant cumulus clouds would cover the celestial anomoly and possibly it would be gone and I would have missed it.  I went inside and pulled out the camera.  I am not an accomplished night sky photographer yet I wanted to give it a try. 

There is something surreal about this event, in my humble opinion.  The first night I noticed the show in the sky, the moon was a tiny, sliver of a moon with Jupiter and Venus as bright as a bright can be trailing along in an otherwise dark sky. My thought was, Star Trek.  Their appearance was so spectacularly other-worldly that it seemed as if I had been transported to alien world.

But wait, that's not all that is going on in the sky.  At the opposite end of the compass point, rising in the east are Mars and later Saturn.  Big, bold Mars, God of War in Roman culture actually is a loving kind of god, who considered war only as a way to secure peace.  Separated across the night sky from his lover Venus who rides on the toga tails of Jupiter, I find it coincidental that there is such a separation between not only Venus but also his non-father Jupiter.  Juno, in retaliation for Jupiter's brainiac conception of Minerva, had the goddess, Flora rub a magic flower across her stomach and brought forth Mars.  No wonder they all keep their distances.  
 
The beauty didn't last and soon the clouds approaching from the southwest overshadowed the clear, white light of Madame Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn.  The wind kicked up, rain beat on the house until eventually the lights flickered wildly and then winked out just like their spectral cousins leaving everything as dark as an alley in ancient Rome.

Evidently, tonight is one of the best nights to see the stellar march of the Gods across the sky.  For more information about these celestial events, here is a good website. 

http://earthsky.org/tonight/all-five-visible-planets-light-up-march-2012-evening-sky

A Beautiful Howling-Moon Night

Luckily, my driveway and house face east affording me a free and clear view of all orbs which rise in the east.  Tonight as I arrived in said drive, the full moon was up and had already sailed over the small tree line.  The night sky stretched clear and beautiful before me, a black velvet dress of a sky, an off-the-shoulder affair worn with a brilliant diamond necklace made of stars.  Howling-moon nights like this with a bite in the air, meaning it's about 32 degrees and chilling, are my favorite kind of backpacking weather.  Why you say?  Well, because on a night like this when out in the wild, I know I am fully alive. 

I set my tent in a clearing after hiking a PUD filled trail full of amazing views, cook my dinner over a backpacking stove while reviewing the days events with my hiking buddies, pee for the last time in hopes that I don't have to get out again and freeze my patootie off and then hit the sleeping bag before I can't feel my feet.  I like to put my boots in the bottom of my sleeping bag so that they aren't stiff and frozen in the morning.  As I snuggle into the fluffy softness of my 15 degree bag, I offer up a silent "thank-you" to the gear gods who design and make this lovely, lightweight backpacking gear which allows this cold-weenie to experience nights like this.  As I turn out my headlamp, I start the nightly ritual that we've developed over the years, I say into the darkness, "Good-night Debbie" and in a litany of laughing name-calling the group says good-night to each other until one of us ends saying what we all know ends this ritual, "Good-night John-boy". 

The night creeps in upon me and within minutes soft snoring starts but I remain awake enjoying the sounds which creep up next to my tent and sit there waiting to scare me like imaginary monsters in a closet.  Small scuffling, snuffling and noises of breaking leaves and twigs come from the edges of the clearing.  "What is out there", I think and while imagining what really COULD be out there, I fall asleep.

Later, deep into the full moon-howling night, I rise, exit my tent following the call of the wild, the need for a potty break.  It's about 25 degrees or colder, the frost dusts the tips of the bushes and paints the leaves on the forest floor with fairy dust and the moon makes it all sparkle with the colors of the rainbow, blinding me at times with the brilliance.  My breath floats before me where hot meets cold and everything is bathed in moon glow.  No one else is awake and it's freezing.   My fleece is all that protects me from the deep, clear cold and as I pull down the long underwear the icy air hits my nether parts.   Yikes!!  Oddly, enough pottying in the middle of the night is the best part of winter camping for the stark contrast between beauty and cold is mind-numbing, literally!  At this point, when done and returning my clothing to their proper place on my body, I stand, tilt my head back, stare into space and suck in the cold, cold reality of the immenseness of the universe.  I want to howl for the life within me.

And that is why on nights like this when I enter my safe, comfortable home, my wild side stays outside and sits on its haunches in the yard until the moon rises so high that it no longer reflects the colors of the rainbow off the hair on my head.  That is when I rise and walk, into the woods, into the wild, following the call of my self.