Reflections on the Seventh Week of Winter – My Sky Event for the Day

Sunrise

    A couple weeks ago, a pop-up window from Space.com distracted me from revising my goat story. “A super blue blood moon!” I yelled though my husband Spence sat four feet away, just across the coffee table.

    I’d seen a supermoon. (See “Chasing the Supermoon” November 20, 2016 blog)

    I’d seen a blue moon.

    I’d seen a blood moon.

    But never a super blue blood moon.

    “Don’t get your hopes up.” Spence paused his Internet news search. “Clouds might block the view.”

    Clouds had blocked many a planet alignment and meteor shower in the past. And this super blue eclipse would be incomplete at moonset in our region. Perhaps I’d get a glimpse of red when the moon dipped behind the west north west horizon while the sun rose in the east. I marked my Google calendar for 7:30 a.m., Wednesday, January 31.

    So, that Wednesday morning, instead of dashing to breakfast after yoga with a Rodney YeeDVD, I pulled on boots.

    With a spatula in hand, Spence looked up from the omelet in the cast iron fry pan. “It’s cloudy. You won’t see the moon.”

    “The clouds might open a crack.” I fetched my purse and camera bag from the bedroom, hustled back to the great room, and set the bags by the door.

    He waved the spatula at my purse. “You’re not going in the car, are you?”

    I wouldn’t see anything in our valley. The moon had set behind the hill an hour ago. “Yep.” I slipped into my coat and rummaged through my purse for car keys.

    Grabbing the waistband of his sweat pants, Spence dropped them to the floor. “It’s not safe for you to drive and look at the sky.” He stepped into jeans. “I’ll drive.” He turned off the stove burners and pulled on his winter vest.

    We climbed into the cab of his truck.

    Spence drove north and west–-always uphill.

    I gazed out the window. Only an optimist would describe the morning as cloudy. Lumpy gray clouds blanketed every square millimeter of the sky.

    Truck tires crunched snow, and the dashboard clock ticked. 7:25 . . . 7:26 . . . 7:27 . . . I screwed the zoom lens onto the camera and scanned the horizon. No cloud cracks and too many trees.

    Spence steered the truck downhill and past open fields with a clear view of the cloudy horizon. 7:33. Two minutes past moonset. Resigned, I turned to the east. “Wow!”

    Spence concentrated on the snow-covered dirt road. “What?”

    “The sunrise is gorgeous–-layers and layers of melon pink and golden orange under dark violet.” I unscrewed the zoom lens from the camera and attached the wide angle lens.

    “I can’t stop now.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “There’s a car on our bumper.”

    The car followed us downhill then turned behind us onto Route 285. Spence eluded the car when he turned the truck uphill at the next side road.

    I peered through trees and around barns.

    Light.

    No sun.

    By the edge of a snow-covered, corn stubble field at the crest of the hill, the sun glowed through a crack on the horizon.

    “Stop!” I unhooked my seatbelt.

    Spence eased the truck to a stop and turned on the flashers. “Be careful getting out. We’re on the edge of a drainage ditch.”

    I hopped out of the truck, ran around the cab, and pressed the shutter release capturing the sun’s glow in a sliver of golden orange.

    The glowing sun reminded me of Dad–-

    On a spring break in 1986, Spence and I had traveled with our son and daughter, then in sixth and fourth grades, to visit my parents in Hilton Head, South Carolina. All six of us rose an hour and a half before sunrise, dressed, and bundled in jackets. Then Dad drove us to the beach in hopes of getting a glimpse of Halley’s Comet. We craned our necks and stared into the sky. No comet. The children kicked sand. Spence walked along the shoreline. I breathed in fragrance of seaweed and kept searching the sky. After twenty minutes, Dad pointed to Venus. “There’s the morning star.” He pulled the car keys out of his pocket. “That’s your sky event for the day.”

    This past Wednesday, I didn’t see the super blue blood moon, and there won’t be another one until I’m eighty-eight. But I’m not devastated. I had plenty of warning that clouds would block Wednesday’s event.

    And I had the sliver of a golden orange sunrise, my sky event for the day.