"we are all made of stars"

Tonight we're supposed to have an especially good crop of Leonids, that lovely celestial light show that takes place each November. The trouble is, they will probably be at their most spectacular while I am sleeping. If I do manage to get up at the appropriate time (1 a.m.-ish) will I take one step out of the relatively-warm house into the definitely-cold back yard and say, to heck with the pesky Leonids ... they're probably not as great in North America as they're supposed to be in Asia, anyway! This could definitely happen. In fact, barring the particular language I am predicting here, something like this is what has happened on many another November night in the years since I first began trying to take advantage of prime opportunities to watch shooting stars.

I am pleased to report that I was more successful this year with the Perseids than I have been on other occasions. On the August night when the Perseids were supposed to be on their best behavior, I had my chaise longue already set up in the back yard, and I had a blanket to put ON the chaise longue so I wouldn't be lying down on its cold, metal-y surface, and I had a light duvet to put on top of ME when I arranged myself on the chaise. Other necessary conditions proved to be cooperative, too: it wasn't beastly cold, damp, or windy, so I was able to remain prone for a goodly while and not get impatient when the first fifteen minutes only netted me a handful of Sightings. (Mostly, what I see is the very last little teensy BIT of a shooting star; rare are the occasions when I can follow an entire arc across the sky.) And most importantly in this part of California, it wasn't total pea-soup foggy, as is far from unusual on an August night in the Bay Area.

But I was out at around 10 or 11 p.m. in August this year: that night, a work night, I knew I wouldn't have the oomph to get out of bed at 3:00 a.m. (which was when the Perseids were supposed to peak) so I decided that whatever shooting stars were going to present themselves for my scrutiny would have to be the early birds of the night. And certainly there weren't hundreds per hour (that's what is predicted for viewers of the Leonids in Asia tonight) but it wasn't bad at all while I was out. I was going to try to describe it so that you could picture the shooting stars and the intervals between the shooting stars, but our poor pitiful language lacks a word for the sight of the passage of a speck of starlight across one's field of vision. Tsk. It really seems there SHOULD be such a word, because when I watch shooting stars I almost feel as though there is a sound associated with the brief experience.

A bunch of years ago, I took part in a kind of Perseids work-party. It was under the auspices of the Golden Gate Recreational Seashore or some such, and a friend and I signed up to be there. We were told to meet at a parking lot on Mount Tam at 11:30 p.m., and to bring sleeping-bags so we wouldn't get too cold. B and I duly arrived at the parking-lot and you could barely see 10 feet in front of you: FOG. But the docent-person turned up, and was in walkie-talkie communication with a ranger elsewhere on Mount Tam, and it turned out that, if we were willing to hike half a mile (in the rather pitch-black darkness) we could try our luck in a little meadow that was, for some reason, NOT blanketed with fog.

Well, we decided we were game, and after the stumbling hike to the meadow (not enough flashlights!), it turned out to be a wonderful few hours. The docent had the 10 or 12 of us lie in a circle, with our heads in the center and our legs pointed outward like the spokes of a wheel. We were each facing a pie-shaped piece of the sky, and it was our job to watch just that space for shooting stars, and to call out as we saw them. That night there were hundreds an hour; it was exhilarating to be out in the dark chill air, staring the universe in the face and calling One! Two-Three-Four-FIVE! Six-seven. Eight-nine-ten! And sometimes there were so many at the same time and we were calling out numbers simultaneously, that I am sure our data were not 100% accurate. My friend and I stayed until around 3:00 a.m., at which point the very VERY cold ground underneath our sleeping bags began to seem like too high a price to pay for even the glories being showered across the sky, so we picked up our sleeping bags and our sleepy selves and went home.

As for tonight, I may try my luck before I go to bed, and I may be inspired to come out in the small hours. Pretty chilly out there though ....