In the Quiet of the Night

I rose around 4:30 a.m. Saturday morning, slipped on my fluffy robe and leather slippers, and softly stepped away from the bed.

My husband snored gently. I left him there.

I wanted to see if I could find the comet.

Without turning on a single light, I found my camera on its tripod in the kitchen and my binoculars beside them, for I had left them where I could easily locate them both before we went to bed. I carried them outside with me, one item in each hand. I set the tripod down and opened the back door.

We'd had a thunderstorm with hail, wind, and rain at dusk. Now the sky was clear. The stars were brilliant, and I could make out the faint crack of dawn across the mountain tops. The half moon hung to my right.

The night sky smelled clean and fresh.

I searched the horizon for the comet. I saw clouds and mist.

Somewhere in there is a comet.

We'd seen the comet around 5:15 on Thursday, but it had been so indistinct I hadn't bothered with photos. 

I thought Friday that perhaps we needed to be up earlier, but it was overcast. On Saturday, I hadn't really planned to wake up, I set no alarm, but my inner curious interloper had awakened me at the time I'd thought appropriate.

The breeze was cool but not cold, and the air was the sweetest it had been in days - I'd not been able to breathe outside well ever since that Sahara dust storm had crossed the Atlantic and found its way across the United States. The rain had cleared the air, and the stars seemed endless.

With my camera on its tripod, I swung it around for a photo of the moon.

Studying our big satellite through my camera lens, I thought how very intriguing it was that its other half was so dark, so indistinct, and so un-seeable. I knew it was there, I've taken enough shots of the full moon to fill albums, but here, at its half-way mark, it looked eerily magical.

My heart rate slowed as I stood there, occasionally pulling the binoculars to my eyes to scan the horizon, searching for the comet, hoping the mist might rise, wondering if I was too early to see it, or too late, even.

A bird chirped. Early riser, I thought, shifting so that the gravel of the driveway poked a different part of my foot through my thin moccasins. I heard a rustle in the leaves, then caught a whiff of skunk, somewhere to my north. Not close, I thought. Just out there, being a skunk, doing its skunk thing.

I watched the bright stars, trying to sort out which was the one I needed to locate the comet, trying to remember the maps I'd looked up earlier in the day. I checked the tree line where we'd seen the comet Thursday, moving the binoculars up, down, and side to side, trying to find the comet.

Mostly though, I stood there and took it all in - this great vast darkness spotted with bright tiny lights, this old world, working hard to shrug us off the planet, finally have had enough of us, and how in the end, we are all simply small and doing our best even when it looks like its the worst thing ever. I wondered if even the really bad people have a conscience, or are they a different species altogether, maybe, some oddly formed chain of DNA that looks like the rest of us but isn't quite, you know, all there, but mainly seeing and feeling the silence, even with the birdsong. 

I stood there with my camera and binoculars, still not finding the comet, for 45 minutes. I was alone but not, what with the sniff of skunk on the wind every once in a while and the bird occasionally whistling a brief tune.

Finally I turned and went back inside. I gave up on the comet. Instead, I found a bit of peace that had eluded me for quite a long time.