Making a date

While I miss the lovely long evenings of Summer, it is nice to be able to watch the dawn again without having to get up at an indecently early hour.

Daybreak often brings a nice surprise that has me abandon breakfast to run outside.

.

That is after first ensuring I won’t be scaring one of our wild friends, of course. I have to admit, I don’t always remember, but deer come to the back of the house, so they wouldn’t see me. Skunks and groundhogs scurry away and soon return.

.

Then I dither about trying for the best capture.

Often I use my iPhone for this sort of thing because of the wide angle it takes, but this morning I must have left it inside.

.

So I went for a zoom and as I was doing that, I heard the call of an approaching flight…

.

It’s nice to see flights of geese again, since in the Spring we saw almost none, which has never happened before. The flight paths had always been the same, Spring and Fall, year after year and always right over the house, so it’s not as if we would fail to see or hear them.

.

That day, I could have installed myself on the porch for 24 hours.

The evening was grand and twelve hours later…

.

It was still dark as we sat down for breakfast and as usual, I concentrated on word puzzles, head down to the tablet in my lap.

Glancing up, I beheld a spectacle where moments before it had been pitch dark!

.

Puzzles abandoned, I flew outside to watch.

.

It took on the appearance of liquid gold, or molten lava.

It’s the sort of vision that evokes the most wonderful sense of wellbeing.

.

Sitting on the porch around the clock would suit me fine, if not for bugs. When the sky is clear, we have a perfect view of the stars.The first winter we were here, there was a lunar eclipse. It took place at around midnight, which is quite late for me.

Pulling on warm clothing and boots, I went out to stand up to my knees in snow, watching. You have no idea how slow an eclipse is until you wait for it in a temperature of 0F/-18C.

Having only recently returned from (what was then) balmy Seattle, I was no longer accustomed to such cold, but it didn’t matter. Winter nights, when there is snow on the ground, are magical, the silence broken only by an occasional stirring of the wind or the call of an animal in the woods.

Looking out into the vast beyond, I felt that somewhere, light years away there must be other beings perhaps gazing at their sky, wondering. It is not an original thought, but on that night it held more meaning.

.

Strangely, I’ve not been out after dark since.

It’s my time for doing other things, I suppose.

.

When I’m warm and comfortable, I am ill-disposed to venture out into the dark, leastwise without good motivation.

One of these nights, I must make a date with myself.

.