by Jamie Dillon
I'd signed up ahead with Ron Dammann thru FPOA, so I was street legal and had the gate combo. Last year when the park was closed night from December thru February, I stayed away without deciding consciously to do that. This year I just wanted to get up there once to mark territory.
It was great. Not for telescope observing, certainly. Butt cold, puddles everywhere, dew already, clouds all over the sky. But I parked on Ranger Row then walked over across the park to the SW lot. There was Mercury all bright, 5 degrees over the horizon. Mars was moving by the Pleiades, and Saturn was still on the outskirts of the Beehive. All in order.
There were some moments when the patches of sky that weren't cloudy were real dark. At one point, M35, that dense open cluster in Gemini, was easy naked eye, not a common event. And Orion's bow was a long full line of stars. The stretch of Orion between Mintaka and Bellatrix, across his heart, had that dense peppering of stars you get on a 6+ night.
Just so I wouldn't feel bad, by 7:20 the clouds had really moved in. And locking up the gate to the observatory on the way out, there was ice forming on the gate pole. But the Peak and the live oaks are still at home, and the stars from there are still dazzling.
We are the people of the hills and the night and the stars. We have been going up to the hilltops these many thousands of years for our own quiet purposes. We and our hills will be around long after the gates and the suits are gone. We will always remember, and always return.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Feb 20, 2006 02:51:16 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Feb 27, 2006 20:01:47 PT