20 December 2007

The time around the Winter Solstice comes in a season fraught with iconic symbols, most prominently stars, candles and the festive lights. For me it is the time of the cold, dark winter sky. So it is only appropriate that yesterday I found an epiphany in that pre-dawn sky.

My balcony has an open view and I am up long before sunrise (not hard to do this time of year) so I always check out the morning sky. Here in Olympia, the result is often cloud and/or rain. Yesterday was different, it was crystal clear darkness shortly after moonset. Venus was bright, almost white, above the eastern horizon. Saturn was overhead, not quite halfway across the sky. Low in the west, red-orange Mars loomed so large that I mistook it for Jupiter. I was stunned. So rare here to get any view and then suddenly the sky opens I see into that sky in a way not possible from any large population center. For the first time in many years I looked into the deep sky and the universe from a place I call Home.

THAT, my friends, is an epiphany worth celebrating. In that celebration and in the spirit of the season, I wish you all much joy and wonder in the days to come.

Peace Always.