A Meteor Shower E-Mail to My Loyal Muse
Q: Did you remember to watch the meteor shower Wednesday morning?
A: Yes, Barbara, I saw the show. I woke up at about 5:00 a.m., which is pretty normal for me. While the computer was booting up and a pot of coffee brewing, I stepped out on the back porch. Here on my mountaintop with no neighbors or roads within a quarter-mile--in a cloudless sky--all the constellations were amazingly bright with clusters and clusters of smaller stars packed between them, especially directly overhead. I found myself wishing you were here with your knowledge of the heavens to point out the major constellation. Right away, I saw one meteor streak by from east to west and burn out as it neared the horizon, and I made a wish.
After I e-mailed my quote of the day, I took a cup of coffee back outside. That’s when I noticed private planes in the sky passing by on a consistent basis. I guess they were enjoying the show from a higher vantage point. About every five to ten minutes another meteor streaked by in the northern sky. Some came from a southeasterly direction and others from the east. I stayed out there in the brisk chill for about thirty minutes, wondering if the time you told me to expect the most meteor sightings was based on my time or yours on the Left Coast.
Then just as I began to delight in the vast, cosmic and infinite wonders of the universe, that’s when things got eerie.
Down the hill from me, I noticed a faint flickering light. The more I stared the brighter this light source became—soon clearly silhouetting the trees on the ridge directly in front of me. Before long, it had my complete attention. With my imagination working overtime, I wondered if it was a forest fire. But it was not that kind of orange, red or yellow light and there were no trails of smoke rising in the air.
Instead, it was a bright glaring blue/white light. I also concluded that it was not coming from the road across the valley, which runs east and west. Progressively brighter, this light came straight up the hill from the creek side, directly at me. To make matters more mystifying, every dog within ear reach began baying and howling.
At one point I wondered, a bit irrationally, if aliens had landed on a mission to perform all kinds of weird experiments on me. I didn’t know whether to hold my ground on the porch, unafraid, or flee inside where I would no longer have to see or fear what I couldn’t explain. I did step in and out of the house for more coffee (and to use the indoor plumbing) until the sky was too light for any more meteor viewing.
Later that day, during a hurried conversation I described the light to a friend who grew up nearby. He said, “Someone was search-lighting on your property, hunting deer illegally with a bow.”
Ahaa, I thought. That explains it!
However, I still wonder how this search lighting works. Seems the deer would run at the first sight of the light and not wait to be blinded by it and freeze in their tracks. But what would a guy like me, born and raised in North Philadelphia, know about a technique like that without asking?
I’ve given a couple of hunters I know permission to use my property during deer and turkey hunting season. They reward me with cuts of venison. But for four years running, the turkeys (often bodaciously loud whenever they are not around) have proven too clever to be bagged. I’ll have to ask the hunters about this search-lighting trick and try to get some straight answers without causing them to worry about me reporting them to the game warden.
Oh yeah, now that I’ve rambled off at the fingertips for so long, it’s time for me to ask: Did you catch the meteor shower too?
