My high hopes for observing the total lunar eclipse were dashed with a great dump of snow last night. I went to bed at midnight when the full moon was still shining but blurred into an abstract blob of light, but still had hopes it would clear by 2:00 am. When my alarm woke me I threw on several extra layers and bounded out onto my snowy porch and eagerly searched the sky. A fine snow pelted my face, and everything was much darker, so I knew the eclipse was happening, right there, just beyond my view! Maddening. I set my alarm for 3:00, hoping against hope it would clear up before the eclipse was over.
Again, the blur of snow revealed only a little dab of diffused light that could just as easily be a gibbous moon on a cloudy day.
And so once again dreams surpassed reality. I had pictured it all day: I would go out onto the mound beyond the fence, that curious hump of earth and snow where I often see deer grazing at dawn, and I would lay back on my down-filled jacket and stare up as the shadow steadily advanced against my favourite of all heavenly bodies, and there would be frightening noises in the woods, making me grip my machete tightly and then laugh at my fear. There would be weird colours, and weirder patterns of light, and I would stay until the shadow began to creep away, and my body was nearly frozen, and then I would troupe sleepily back to bed and dream of telescopes and space exploration.
But on the bright side: Winter Solstice has come and gone! The darkest part of the year is over, and our days will lengthen again. The worst is over – though, speak to me again in February and I may have a different story.
Now I've just cheered myself up by reading from Elizabeth Bishop's The Man-moth:
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, / feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold, / of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.
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