In the wee hours earlier this week, our whole family headed out in the middle of the night for some stargazing. The girls are still trying to decide whether it was worth it.
%{color:gray}Cedar Campus before lights out.%
We’d been thinking about the annual “Perseid meteor shower”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseids for ages, and were delighted to learn that this year’s event would coincide with our visit to “Cedar Campus”:http://www.cedarcampus.com — which is located in the Upper (and importantly, very dark) Peninsula of Michigan. Lucky for us! We never would have seen the show clearly at home, amidst the ambient light that is the Chicago night sky.
In anticipation we reminded ourselves about meteors and shooting stars by singing the song by They Might Be Giants:
bq.. A shooting star is not a star,
Is not a star at all
A shooting star’s a meteor
That’s heading for a fall
A shooting star is not a star?
Why does it shine so bright?
The friction as it falls through air
Produces heat and light
A “shooting star” or “meteor” —
Whichever name you like —
The minute that it falls to earth,
It’s called a “meteorite”
h2. The Viewing
Since we’re seriously on vacation, Jon decided not to set himself an alarm, just to see whether his inner astronomer might spontaneously wake up during this year’s peak viewing hours (2 to 4 a.m.). Indeed, he popped awake at 3:45. Perfect!
This was the plan: after heading outside to check whether the view was clear and and to reconnoiter the best spot to see the constellation Perseus and the rest of the sky, he would come back to our cabin to wake the rest of us. All clear! And even better, not a breath of wind. The main dock in Prentiss Bay would be perfect viewing, with Perseus well up in the northeast, along with all the starry host.
Mama was up in a jiffy, but it took several tries to rouse the children from dreamland. Amid youngters’ yawns and second thoughts about all the bother, we hiked through the woods’ deep night to the Lake Huron shore. Rosie shivered in her jammies and coat while I carried her. (“Watch out for porcupines!” she kept warning us.) Lucy crunched alongside Papa down the gravel path till we reached the mirror-calm bay.
I have seen some shooting stars before, but my city-girl lifestyle hadn’t exposed me to anything like _this_. We saw two or three shooting stars every minute while we gaped in awe! Even as we simply scanned the sky for the next meteor, the clear constellations and Milky Way shone beautifully. I kept thinking about how this experience will transform our regular visits to the “Adler Planetarium”:http://www.adlerplanetarium.org.
We only stayed down on the dock for about ten minutes until Rosie, trembling with cold, convinced us to return. “That was a shivery trip!” she declared upon our return. The girls snuggled back into their cozy sleeping bags and fell quickly back to sleep. Jon went back out to see more, while I tucked myself into bed, singing “A shooting star, a shooting star” in my head over and over. So exciting! No wonder it took me another hour to finally fall asleep.
h2. Light from the Stars
Lately, I’ve been steeping myself (once again) in Madeleine L’Engle’s series, the Austin Family Chronicles. Since I first read them as a preteen, I’ve loved the way the teenager Vicky Austin experiences emotional angst and deals with it by talking with her family, writing poetry, and looking at the stars. There is a lovely passage in _A Ring of Endless Light_ (which I’m currently in the middle of) where Vicky and her brother John sit on the beach and watch the stars come out while discussing some heavy issues.
bq. John and I sat on in silence. The stars came out one by one. When we were little in Thornhill, when anything big happened, mother would pile us into the station wagon and we’d drive up to the summit of Hawk Mountain and look at the stars and talk, so stars have always helped me to get things into perspective.
I never had experiences with nature like this as a child, ones that would help me to process the big, important questions of life. Jon did, through camping and canoeing with his family and his Boy Scout troop, and I’m glad he brings his appetite for outdoor adventures into our family.
Might a midnight outing to see the Perseids give Rosie and Lucy at ages five and seven a profound orientation to cosmic wonders? Maybe not in a single night, but it seems like a good — and delightful — habit to start early in life.
h2. In the Morning
In the morning, the girls were — shall we say, “reluctant”? — to wake up again. We finally got them dressed and headed to the dining hall for their favorite vacation breakfast of Captain Crunch cereal (while the rest of us indulged in the equally decadent Holiday Morning French Toast from the Cedar Campus kitchen crew).
As we reflected on our midnight adventures, the girls noted that they really enjoyed the shooting stars, but they did _not_ like being woken up in the middle of the night.
“Well,” said Papa. “Sometimes you just have to do things in your pajamas.”