Star-light...Star-bright...

Rob and I slipped away to our community's private beach last night at midnight. Dragging reclining lawn chairs, toting a few snacks and a sizable amount of bug-spray, we set up 'camp'.

Camping out to watch the Perseid meteor shower that is! We used to drag the children from their beds, back when Bobby was a baby and Kathryn a grumpy, tired kid who thought staring at the sky was 'boring'. She doesn't quite 'get it' yet, so is happy to stay home in bed when Rob and I sneak away for our twice yearly starlit dates.

I've always been awed by the vast night sky, velvet black with it's scattering of cold diamond stars. I remember as a teenager, climbing up on the garage roof on warm summer weekends after babysitting jobs. The neighborhoods were quiet, mom and dad weren't expecting me back at an exact time, and I was 'safe' there, close to home. I'd lay up there with the warm, scratchy shingles gripping my clothes lightly, like sandpaper, feeling the magnitude of the heavens as they pulsed above.

Each twinkling star winked at me as we conspired together, me dreaming dreams, and the stars sending their light across a galaxy. Every shooting star then was a gift, and the mystery of the milky way caught my imagination with it's millions of stars gathered onto a hazy ribbon.

I have fond memories too...of 'Star Hill' in Rome, NY...where our family would sometimes gather late at night to drink in the sight of an uninterrupted summer sky filled with more stars than you could imagine. There, atop the verdant dome of grass, breezes tickling our faces, we would send out our silent pleas to the heavens to send us a star-fireworks display! Shooting stars, falling stars, earth-grazers with their phosphorescent tails lingering behind and fading to view after long moments left us hungry for more.

Last night was no exception, and the earth's rotation pulling us through the Perseid debris provided us with some exceptional flashes and bursts.As we talked and reminisced on years' expeditions past, we would gasp or exclaim, pointing out each sighting to each other with awe and delight. There was easily, to our count, a falling star or two each minute, with a good half-dozen 'earth grazers' that flamed across the sky with impossible brightness, trails lingering and fading behind them, making the trip worthwhile.

The surf was gentle, the sand free of critters, (though not sand-fleas, mosquitoes and black flies, dangit!), and if there had been a nice breeze we could have stayed out longer. As it was, dressing in jeans to ward off the swarms of biting insects left us warmer than was comfortable. That surf breaking lightly on the beach looked SO inviting! If we had brought towels, I'd have gone in the water in a heart beat...night-scene from JAWS playing in my mind, notwithstanding!!!

We did walk along the beach, playing tag with the surge of foaming water a little, and we found, to our delight, that our dragging steps in the damp sand stirred up the flash and glitter of microscopic bio luminescent phytoplankton washed up on the shore. "These tiny plants give off a faint bluish-green light and silver spark when stepped on or in stirring the sand around. Apparently, the occurrence of dinoflagellate blooms coincides with certain weather and oceanic conditions, and can appear one night, and then not appear again for months. The luminescence of a single dinoflagellate lasts for 0.1 seconds, and they don’t live in the sand more than a day"*, making our experience even more memorable.

Walking backwards, each dragging step stirred up enough glitter to satisfy Tinker Bell at Disney! Tiny twinkling lights at our feet echoed the vast array of twinkling glitter above. What a magnificent sight!

We had arrived about midnight, and at about 2:30am, the muggy, sticky, humid air and droves of insistent bugs sent us scrambling back to the relative cool and safety of the air-conditioned car. We spent another hour there...Rob snoring loudly in his reclined seat, while I propped up with pillows, backwards on my seat, head on the dash, staring up through the windshield at the familiar sky of my youth. With the air conditioning on, and no new prickling bites or buzz-by mosquitoes with their high-pitched whine in my ear...I connected again to that deep peace I feel when in view of a clear night sky draped with it's black crepe and shining silvered sequins.

With no moon in the sky to compete with, the stars twinkled and glowed with a brilliance seen only in the rare occasions we can get far enough away from civilization to enjoy true darkness. The heavens dazzled with ice white flashes, alternating with cold blues, twinkling reds, and the bright flashes and streaks of shooting stars.

It's a privilege to live in a world swathed and cradled in the beauty of the heavens.

*http://www.beachconnection.net/news/glow0806_0423.htm