We’ve had some crystal clear days this past week which have translated into blue skies, and at night, some amazing starry nights. Having grown up in an urban area, I never really learned much about the night skies, astronomy or anything else. The city lights simply dimmed most of the constellations and planets, so it wasn’t something I really even paid much attention to. However, once I moved to the mountains out west, where there wasn’t much light pollution, the night skies took on so much more meaning to me. One of my early mountain memories was watching the Perseids metor showers from atop a granite dome along the Glacier Point Road in Yosemite. I remember lying there at 3 a.m. in the morning, and meteors streaking one after another, hundreds of them through the course of the night. I had never seen anything like that.
My other vivid memory of starry skies in the west, was from the summer I spent at Capitol Reef National Park in south-central Utah. It is one of those places in the west that has little to no light pollution because there is literally no population in the area. We had a resident astronomer program there, where an astronomer would come to the park for several weeks, and host programs nightly with large telescopes. I have never seen the Milky Way look so vibrant as I did there. The stars were so bright, they literally lit up the landscape. However, one night, when I had stayed after dark at the visitor center, and then tried to walk back to park housing with no flashlight, the sky was clouded over. Normally, in most places there is enough ambient light, your eyes eventually adjust, and you can see where you are going. It was so dark, I never could see where I was going, and literally walked off the road into a nearby rabbitbrush.
And a full moon over the Rocky Mountains is something that is simply beyond description. The moon as it rises appears as the incredibly large golden orb hanging over the tops of the peaks, illuminating the mountains and canyons as it rises higher and higher in the night sky. Breathtaking!
The starry night skies, and many constellations I see as I take the dogs out for a late night walk is just one more thing I treasure about living in our little mountain abode.
