Be my birthday tomorrow, the 28th, it is, it is.
Gonna start off with watching the lunar eclipse outside tonight, in some place with a reasonably clear horizon not filled with trees.
The eclipse starts around 10:30 pm tonight and then will be full (well, 95 percent) at 12:12 a.m.
I’ve seen a lunar eclipse before. Pretty. Red. Soft. Cool.
It was a cloudy night then. A summer night. I think it was the September 27-28, 2015, super moon lunar eclipse.
A friend and I had co-hosted a party at his on-the-water place in Annapolis that Saturday. It was lovely (as all our parties are, were, have been etc.)
As was typical for these parties, a slew of folks would stay overnight and help clean up and put things away the next day … after a leisurely breakfast, strong coffee and plenty of bacon, that is.
We did what needed doing, some folks went home, and some folks were still hanging around, enjoying the beautiful early fall weather, spacious yard and view of the river when the home owner, who had a dock and a boat, suggested we go out on the water. We did. The Severn River. The Chesapeake Bay. Into Annapolis and Ego Alley. Then off to some pull-your-boat-up bar for a bit.
The sun had set, the last bits of daylight still hung in the sky, and it was time to start heading back to his home.
We left the bar, turned “a corner” and BAM!!!!! There was this huge, mega, gorgeous, glorious super moon cresting right above the water and the horizon. We let out a collective whoop of glee and awe in seeing such a sight. I think (not quite sure about this part) the way home required boating toward the setting sun. One way or the other, we traveled back to his home, our eyes glued to this massive, gorgeous super moon.
Afterward, most of those present headed home, but me and another person stayed because we wanted to see the lunar eclipse. (Were I to have traveled home, I’d have been in the car while it was eclipsing, so I stayed.)
We got out some blankets, laid them down then laid on them, looking upward toward the moon.
It was a cloudy night. The moon was only visible in fits and starts with the clouds mostly covering it. But we could see, here and there, the eclipse coming on, the color of the moon warming and ultimately turning its lunar-eclipse red.
It was an interesting experience. I was tired from all the go-go-go of getting ready for the party, co-hosting it, sleeping in a not-my-bed bed with others in the room, a day of cleaning and then the boat ride out on the bay.
And maybe I’d already have been in a napping-ish mood, being flat on my back, looking at a slow-moving phenomenon on a cloudy night.
But I also felt as though the lunar eclipse was putting a quiet blanket over everything.
As the eclipse came on, the neighborhood dogs howled in some ancient way the darkness called them to do so. Then they all got quiet.
While I left after the eclipse had eclipted — still having my drive home, unpacking, re-acclimating to my life-space-home and getting ready for bed — I heard later from the two who stayed for the entirety of the eclipse, including its return to being not-shadowed, that a fox had come up to the two of them and sat mere feet from them while they laid on their backs, looking up.
!!!
If you’re in the East Coast area, the eclipse viewing tonight will be a good one … even if it is a bit cloudy in places. And unlike when trying to get a good view of an asteroid shower, or some other meteorological event in the sky, lunar eclipses don’t require darkness to be visible. So, perhaps you’ll get out and see the eclipse yourself tonight. Holler if you do.
