It's late and I can't sleep. I've been around the dial a dozen times, there's nothing to watch. According to the thermometer in my car, it was 123 degrees in Palm Desert today about 5 p.m. Of course, Palm Desert has miles of concrete, makes it a little hotter than other places. The low last night was 84 degrees F. I remember camping once, in the mountains north of the Santa Anita racetrack. I slept outside on the ground. It got colder and colder all night long, and when the sun came up it melted the frost and then we were wet and cold. That was one where I hiked in from the ranger station carrying my pack and wearing my tiara. It was a mile downhill and then three miles up hill to the camp. The rangers packed in all the supplies on mules. Later they packed out one of the campers who sprained her ankle and couldn't walk. Since the trail was narrow and there was a sharp drop on one side, I imagine being a body on a mule would be pretty scary. That reminds me of the time my husband and my mother and I stopped to eat at Nepenthe, on California's coast highway 1. The car wouldn't start and eventually AAA sent out a tow truck. Unfortunately, he was already towing one car, and that car's driver was riding with him. So he rolled us up on his flat bed, and chained the car in place. It was a surreal experience, riding along in the dark, on narrow bits of highway 1, looking down from our swaying perch to the ocean far below. Scary damn road.
that reminds me of seeing Hale-Bopp from a dip in the Landers road out in the high desert. The road dipped down steeply and suddenly into the wash. From there all ambient light was blocked out and HB looked huge and mysterious.
Have you ever seen Mono Lake in the middle of the night with a huge bright full moon over it, and crystal clear sky, with a Mozart cd playing in the car? Took my breath away.
The weekend of Nov 17, 2001. Meteor shower. Went out to the high desert, quite far, but kept a mountain between us and the 29 Palms military base. We sat out near a log fire, and watched meteors until about 3 a.m. when we couldn't stay awake any longer. We each were counting 500 to 2000 meteors an hour, streaking in every direction. I couldn't breathe for the beauty of it. And it's interesting that 2000 meteors in an hour sounds like a lot of them coming fast and furious but it wasn't like that. There were many shooting stars but there was time to appreciate each one. Counting to 2000 in an hour is actually rather slow. It was a slow silent majestic awesome display. There are some wonderful once-in-a-lifetime things I've seen.
In Monterey, same trip as the tow truck incident, we went out with a group of friends to watch whales. We got into a bunch of orcas, we could see dozens of them on all sides. Sometimes as many as seven of them would shoot into the air together and hang in an arc for a brief second before splashing down again. The captain of the boat said there must be a huge school of smaller fish in the area for so many orcas to be together in one place. My mother was little, under five feet, about the size of many of the kids on the boat. She would duck and wiggle and push her way to the railings to see the orcas - one of the most amazing memories we shared.
I've seen starry nights with no moon in many places, Alaska and California and Tahiti and Mexico and Montana/Wyoming/Utah/Colorado. The darkest of dark nights was in Tahiti, going for a walk late in the evening. A glittering brilliant sky, unfamiliar to our northern eyes, so awesome. I wonder what it was like to live on a tiny island in the huge ocean and have the huge black sky full of stars above and no idea that there were other people on the planet. Easter Island must have been like that once.
I'm craving a drive along the ocean in the pitch dark with just starlight to see the waves by. I've craving a nice beach with a good beach fire, and constant sound of waves, I'd love to be camping out on the beach and watching the stars until I fall asleep.