Pissed Stars

This past Friday was an interesting afternoon. I decided after my first full weekend here in which it rainded the entire time, that I wasn't gonna hang out in Pisa Moorings on the weekends while I still have free time before harvest starts. I needed that first weekend to catch my breath and have a look at what I'd come through though, so it was a great weekend.

Thursday rolls around and I'm finalizing plans for the weekend (ie, deciding where to go and the logistics of getting there) and thinking about what Friday should look like. Friday was looking good so I made my lunch and went to bed.

End of work on Friday I'm zoning out. The plans I'd envisioned started being replaced with thoughts of swimming in the lake after working out or having beers and chillin'. Discipline came back around and I started on the plans I had for after work. These included getting the rest of the ingredients for the rhubarb and peach crisp, checking out the laundromat w/ WiFi, laundry, working out, deciding how I was getting to Dunedin, packing and cleaning up. If time allowed, which it should've since I'm usually home by 4-415pm, I'd go have some beers in Cromwell and see if Fridays are more happening than Sundays.

Home by 430 with the stuff for the crisp. Plan was to start the laundry then start the crisp.
WTF?!?! What's up with this washing machine? Why won't it fill? (my hosts were gone all weekend). Ok. No hot water wash. Hope this detergent and stain stick work on my whites. Hmm...how many grams are in a half a cup? Eff it. I used to wing it in the lab...Why isn't the wash machine spinning and draining? Ugghh. How 'bout the Drip Dry setting? That filling is way too wet and why does the silicone baking dish smell funny? Whatever. Ohh, shit. These close are still completely wet. Guess I'm doing the spin by hand. Man that dish smells funny...That crisp doesn't look right. Doesn't taste right either. What time is... 7pm?!?! Of course.

I went to work out thinking I could still get everything done and be at the bar by 10-1030. Uh, no. Dinner took longer than it should've and so did finding the bus schedule from Cromwell to Dunedin. 11pm rolls around and I was feelin' pretty jaded and cynical. It was more than the stops and starts but I couldn't figure out what. After sorting it out with my book, I realized I'm trying to do too much. I'm not just talking about these events, I've got back burners going, new burners starting as well as the front burners that are on. I was feelin' pretty pissed about it all and thinking of turning off my brain with the help of the idiot box. Instead, I took a second helping of crisp out on to the back deck since it was still nice out. It gets pretty dark out since there's just some subdivision street lamps.

All the lights off inside, I stepped out onto the deck and looked up. Thousands of little specks of light were shining back at me, some of them twinkling.

HOLY EFF.

I just started smiling. Everything else melted away. Everything that was annoying me and pissing me off just dissipated through my feet onto the deck, dripping through the slats. I sat down in one of the chairs and ate my less than planned crisp and felt insignificant.

I've seen night in the southern hemisphere before, but I don't remember it like this–maybe b/c I was in the south western hemisphere before. I was trying to remember how the stars move around and the stellar map I had as a kid but couldn't recognize anything. Well, the Milky Way. But it's not Orion's Belt is it? It's pretty bizarre not seeing either dipper. I just sat there. Eating crisp and chuckling to myself. This was one of those moments for me that no one else would see. Then I decided I needed to get away from the lights of the subdivision so I finished my crisp and set off for the bluff in Pisa Moorings on Lake Dunstan. PM's lights would still be visible but not in direct view...An aside here–there's a great article in one of the last year or two of Nat. Geographic about light pollution. Some area of the US has designated itself as something like a light free landmark so night viewing can be protected. It also said something about parts of Africa being some of the only parts of the inhabited world where light pollution hasn't affected looking at the night's sky.

So I ventured off for the bluff. As I left the house, at around 1145-midnight, the night temp was still high enough that I could wear shorts and a t-shirt (it is summer after all) and immediately I was 8 or 9 yrs old again. Summertime back on Catoctin Ave. Catching fireflies. Mom calling bats with pruning shears. Crickets, cicadas and other insects all talking to their peeps. Temperatures becoming tolerable with warm breezes. Lying in bed with every window in the house opened (they were all screened). Watching the moths bouncing off the streetlamp outside my window while trying to fall asleep. The smell of cool, damp MD humidity. It all came back as I walked eastward toward the bluff. Funny how memory pathways get triggered.

In my line of sight was a patch of stars that looked like the remnants of one of those dripping fireworks; like someone had spattered paint on a canvas. I don't ever remember seeing stars look like this.

On the bluff, I laid on my back for awhile looking for satellites and shooting stars, listening to the trees rustle and the birds and ducks talking. With the Milky Way looking back at me, I began to wonder if my camera could catch any of what I was looking at. After fiddling for a bit, I had a eureka moment and began capturing images like the ones below. I did this for a while longer before I decided sleep would be necessary to even come close to leaving for Dunedin when I wanted to. So I walked back and went to bed, no longer afflicted with the thoughts from earlier that evening.

Here are 2 of the images I caught. Guess it's not so much a moment just for me, but I don't mind sharing this.

The Milky Way is in the bottom left corner

Milky Way in the bottom right corner

Peace fam. Stay frosty