So last week as you may be aware I was on a short
vacation. Too short. Not the usual too short – too short because
crammed between a wedding and a holy day there were only a couple of days
available to go. But my sister who lives
in town here was dead set about going to New York (with Sebastian) to see our
eldest sibling who lives in the Adirondacks in order to see the meteor shower
that was taking place that weekend and that weekend only. So
it had to be the week that I only had a couple possible days to be away.
If you want to see sky though, there are not many places to
see it. Your area has to be pretty free
from light pollution if you really want to see the sky – something that most
people will never experience in the United States. If you really want to see stars you must go
searching for them otherwise the only place you see them is in text books and
Google Images.
So we drive 11 hours to our New York sister’s house almost
non-stop. There are not many places one
may take a dog along the highway. It was
already dark and we ate a little, aired out the dog, and then set up Adirondack
chairs in her garden and waited for the show.
Funny thing about shooting stars. One must be awake to see them.
Eventually I did see some.
The night was so clear we could even see satellites in the
sky; something I’d never experienced before.
I had no idea it was even possible.
Then just like that it was time to take the 11 hour ride
back home, something that had to be rushed even more because I had to take at
least one of the holy day Masses. That
is when the texts started coming in.
Normally Fr. P would never bother me on a vacation but we
were tag teaming parish work this week.
As soon as I walked in the front door of the rectory he was going to go
out the back on his vacation. He was
just waiting to see the whites of my eyes to make sure that there would be
someone to say Mass. That is why these
texts started appearing concerning funerals came in:
1 comment:
Ha ha ha! I can SO relate to the missed shooting stars. Every year we time our week on the shores of Lake Michigan to coincide with the Perseid meteor shower. My brother in law has a cottage in a really remote area. Like you said, there are so many more stars than folks in NE Ohio can even imagine. We spent hours on our backs on the beach with 360 degrees of visibility, seeing shooting stars every night from Saturday night through the following Friday. Some of them were really spectacular, but it's hard not to be envious when your nephew on the blanket next to you sees twice as many stars as you do!
You might like to know that you actually can see a lot of shooting stars right here in Summit County. We first learned about the Perseids through the MetroParks program where folks gather to watch them at a local park. This year it was at Silver Creek. . It's not the Adirondacks or northern Michigan, but still, it's worth a shot if you don't want to drive 22 hours to see them!
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