Monday, August 27, 2007

Shooting Stars

Recently, Grant and I went camping in the Bighorn Mountains. We were fortunate to go on a night with a new moon and perfectly clear skies, and the stars were radiant and innumerable.

Stars, of course, are always innumerable, but our capacity to perceive them is greatly limited by more local conditions, like sunlight during the day, like moonlight, cloud cover or light pollution at night, or even by our human frailties, like poor eyesight or sleepiness.

But the stars shine on regardless, and on certain nights like this one they revealed themselves to us in all their distant and unfathomable brilliance. The Milky Way was strung like a shimmering banner across the middle of the sky. Constellations too obtuse to name declared themselves boldly. The North Star confidently anchored the whole celestial orchestra as the stars rotated slowly and almost perceptibly across the sky.

The lack of cloud cover made the night crisp, and Grant I and lay bundled in coats and hats on an extra sleeping bag in the middle of a large meadow surrounded by pines. As always, he remained relentlessly inquisitive, peppering me with questions about the sky, and I taught him as best as I could about the sun, the moon, and the stars, about asteroids and meteors, about satellites and falling stars. His sharp mind grabbed the gist of it all, and soon his questions relaxed; our joint pursuit of the evening became to see a falling star.With more stargazing experience I was able to pan my vision out and catch a larger area of sky; over then next hour I saw--not a lot--but dozens of shooting stars, ephemeral flashes of faint light zipping across the corner of my vision. I would point them out, but Grant would turn his head a fraction of a second too late, just after a scintillating streak had evaporated into darkness.

If only I could predict in which pocket of the sky they would flash next; or if I could teach him to widen his focus and encompass a more panoramic vision of the night; or if a monster meteor would tear through the atmosphere and create an unmistakable arc of fire . . .

But time and again, I caught the faint streak out in my peripheral vision, exclaimed surprise and pointed, and Grant would turn, asking earnestly "Where, Daddy? Where?" To which I responded, "Oh, you just missed it, Buddy. Keep watching over this way . . .", and I would point, as if the odds of seeing one over there were somehow increased because I had just seen one there.

Seeking to reward his curiosity and enthusiasm, I turned his attention to satellites for a while, and he was better able to spot them as they criss-crossed the sky in their slow methodical orbits, flaring and fading as their metallic bodies spun and glinted in the invisible moonlight. This was a small success, but not as fleeting or fulfilling as a shooting star . . . and so still we hopefully gazed.

My mind began to drift in and out of the stars, to my oldest dreams of being an astronaut, to science fiction novels, to religion and science, to the agelessness and ancientness of the starry skies, which must have looked just as they had a hundred, a thousand, or even a million years ago, excepting the satellites. I began to perceive depth in the star-fields, convincing my brain that these were not dots on a sheet, but diamonds scattered disparately through the empty profundities of the universe . . .

And then suddenly a brilliant flash ignited directly overhead, blazing a long white-green arc across the middle of the sky that seemed suspended in air for a catchable second. "Ooooh!" I gestured. "Grant, did you see that?"
But my little buddy was quiet, and I glanced to his head nestled on my arm. He breathed deeply and contentedly, his face bathed in blue starlight, his eyes closed. I imagined him dreaming of brilliant and beautiful things, like these shimmering starfields on this moonless night in the mountains that lullabied him to sleep; or like the elusive shooting stars that he couldn't yet see, though his Daddy could, and that was enough for him.


Thursday, August 16, 2007

Summer Gardens

I love to garden.
I freely admit it. Maybe that takes me down
a few notches on the coolness scale.
But the truth is that gardening has become
a deeply held passion for me.
Last summer, because of the timing of our move to Worland, we were unable to have a garden, and I felt a tangible sense of loss.
What was summertime without a garden?
All winter long, I thought about our future summer garden:
What would we plant? How would I parcel it?
What would grow in Wyoming?
Springtime came blessedly.
I tilled the garden, mixed in fertilizer and peat moss,
and waited for the magical date of May 15th,
which was to be the last frost for this latitude.
We planted; we watered; we waited.
Nothing sprouted for weeks.
And then--great tragedy!
Thousands upon thousands of weeds began poking out of the soil.
My fertilizer must have been contaminated. Despair!
Feverishly, I plucked and plucked,
but the next day there would be twice as many new weed sprouts.
It seemed impossible to eradicate the intruders.
I had a very real creepy-crawly sensation,
like I was vicariously covered with cooties.
But then my green beans pushed their green heads
through the crumbly soil.
Next came the carrots and onions,
then the zucchini, the cantaloupe, and the sunflowers.
Finally, the broccoli and the watermelon emerged.
The tomatoes and pepper sprouts began to flourish.
I reformulated my weeding strategy.
I couldn't kill the weeds in their infancy--
there were too many and they grew too quickly.
Instead, I would allow the weeds and the veggies to grow up together,
and then as the weeds matured
they would be easier to distinguish and pluck.
It was a downright biblical plan.
A few weeks went by,
and finally it was time to separate the wheat from the tares.
I spent several hours on several nights pulling thousands of weeds and filling dozens of buckets.
It was sweaty, grimy work--but it was intensely satisfying,
like a purging of poison from the body.
The garden seemed to breath freely
with the eviction of the strangulating weeds,
and within days it seemed to double in size.
Its canopy of shade and expanding root system asserted itself,
preventing the weeds from re-establishing.

And now our garden is lush and green and abundant,
and we are dining nightly on its fruits.
We have succulent greenbeans, gargantuan zucchini,
ripening cantaloupe, bright orange carrots,
pendulous tomatoes, and burgeoning broccoli.
Not to mention a mammoth, twelve-foot tall sunflower!

Watering the garden every evening has become a top priority and a meditative ritual. I shower the garden, I breathe in its humid airs,
soaking in its vitality, its productivity, its earthen, organic vibrance.

I garden, therefore I am.

Friday, August 03, 2007

The Assault on Cloud Peak








Three men and a dream . . .
A lush green valley with innumerable lakes . . .
A mystical 13,162 ft peak shrouded away in clouds . . .
A hailstorm, a lightning storm . . .
An endless field of car-sized boulders . . .
A triumphant summit . . .
An exhausted descent . . .
A highly illegal campfire . . .
An adventure, a conquest . . .
A memorable trip with two good friends . . .