Traveling east to Albuquerque on one of my favorite roads in the country: route 60 from Springerville, Arizona. Needing an astronomy fix after leaving Kitt Peak, I stopped at the Very Large Array in west-central New Mexico. As wondrous as it was to see miles of radio telescopes listening to something far far away, I was only there for an hour or two, and I couldn't help but miss the rhythm of my time at the observatory. Nothing quite compares.
I had all these plans. I'd spent time in Tucson before (almost moved there 16 years ago) and I was excited to visit favorite spots: Gates Pass, Antigone Books, all the vintage clothing stores on 4th, the Donut Wheel, etc. So the day after I arrived at Kitt Peak Don said, "Let me know when you'd like to go somewhere." I just looked at him. Leave the quiet paradise of the mountain for the crazy world below? No way. I didn't even go to the Center for Creative Photography. (I know, I know... just shoot me.)
We did, however, spend a bit of time at the San Xavier Mission while on a grocery run...
On the first morning of summer, Tony called down to me from the observatory roof: "Hey!" he said. "How was your night?" I thought for a minute and my eyes welled up with tears at the same time I was grinning from ear to ear. "You know how you have these moments in your life?" I said. "... This handful of unbelievable experiences you know you'll remember forever? And best of all, you're lucky enough to recognize them even as they're happening?!" He smiled back at me.
That was my time on the mountain. And it felt like this:
Albert Einstein's bookplate, by Eric Büttner, 1917.
It started with a little drawing Don made to illustrate our place on the earth that night...
...which would later inspire my favorite photograph.
Don told me he was on an airplane once working on his laptop when the lady next to him asked why he was an astronomer. "What's the point?" she said. And I think about that. Sometimes the point is just to look. To watch. To be curious. To find out. To maybe come to understand even a little bit, and to be awed by everything we don't.
How do I even begin to say thank you for this amazing gift of time in night-magic-land? Words fall so short.
© 2024 Claudia Retter