Stargazing - Acadia

the sun goes down, moon goes up. mars rises above the moon. the big dipper falls to the north. we race to the top of cadillac mountain at 2 AM to catch a glimpse of saturn and jupiter rising before the clouds roll in. in the morning i had tinkered with a telescope i found in the house we're staying at and brought it to the summit. with thousands of stars above us, its hard to pinpoint and locate objects in the sky with the telescope i can't tell one star from another in the lens. we abandon the telescope and peer into the heavens with our eyes. it's cold and windy. there are 2 cars in the lot at the top of the mountain. presumably people are sleeping in their cars. 

"hey J and B, ancient light from distant galaxies is  traveling 186,000 miles per second. you know the light from the closest star is 4.3 years old. the light from the nearest galaxy andromeda is 2.5 million years old. the most distant galaxy observed from the hubble telescope is 13.4 billion years old. looking at the stars is like looking into the past." 

looking at the rocks and one contemplates geological time, looking at the stars one contemplates even more immeasurable astronomical time, looking at J and B run around the summit in the dark i contemplate ephemeral human time. 

8 hours prior, we were canoeing in the middle of long pond when i  told J and B of my plans to take them stargazing in the middle of the night. they protested, but i told them if they wanted to get back to shore they would have to go stargazing with me. they needed me to paddle to return to the launch site. even though i haven't canoed for years, i can canoe tirelessly for hours because of my dragon boat training from 20 years ago. it's one of my special powers. 

J. mutinied and jumped into the middle of the freezing water with a life jacket. he tried to swim back to us, but the afternoon waves and wind carried him further away. it was funny at first, and we were laughing. but then i worried he might get hyporthermia.... or worse, K would kill me if J perished under my 'supervision and care'. he took off his life jacket to free his arms to swim. when he got back to the boat, despite multiple frantic attempts he couldn't lift his leg over the gunwale to get back in the boat, i tried to lift him but he was too heavy.  that's when i told him to hold on for dear life. he looked at me with his 2 hands grasping to the side of the boat and entrusted his life to me. the back of his head was now leaning into the water. i invoked my dragon boat stroke and  told B to paddle hard... counting the strokes. we powered through the wind and waves to the eastern shore where J finally got back into the boat. sopping wet, i gave him my shirt and told him to paddle to stay warm. crazy kid, i thought to myself. there's a rule. if there's water, J will get wet. in iceland he jumped into any icy  stream at kirkjufell to avoid capture by me, at the pond in stamford he waded with his pant legs rolled up before immersing himself fully. at long pond i knew better, and brought him extra clothes in the car. 

on the summit J ran around without a shirt. compared to the freezing water, the cold air was nothing to him. we go home, we can't sleep. our nearest star rises to the east over the ocean waves. 

Mars over the moon

Tinkering with telescope

Long Pond