The month of August approaches, and those of us living in humid Georgia will have an opportunity to see once again the lights of the heavens. August is a dry month here. High pressure weather systems clear the air. Most of the year a combination of clouds, street lights and the glare from the city keeps the stars hidden from us.
Not so when I was a child in south Texas, living on the rim of the Wild Horse Desert with its clear atmosphere. Our little house (“Four rooms held together by a chimney,” said my father) had a back porch where we all slept. I watched the play of the constellations through the seasons, the milky way, shooting stars, an occasional comet. I would have become an astronomer but – alas! – I am no mathematician.
Our grandparent’s generation knew well those heavenly lanterns. The seasons were delineated by the stars. Sirius the dog star rising with the sun; that marks Dog Days. The Square of Perseus appearing in the east at twilight – Fall is on the way. Camping on the Oregon Trail? Set your wagon tongue toward Polaris, the North Star.
The northern skies were my grandmother Baird’s territory. She showed me Perseus and the demon star. Cassiopeia (“the broken-back chair”) circling opposite Ursa Major (“the wain,” an Elizabethan term).
My grandmother Crossley pointed south, to the archer Sagittarius (“the teapot”) and my favorite, Scorpio with red Antares at its back. Where did they learn these things? At their mother’s knees, of course.
Are you with me, here in the cloudy east? This August, drive a few miles away from town’s lights. Find a place to see across a meadow, looking south, away from the trees and those darned yard lights. And enjoy my favorite Scorpio splayed across the sky.
By the way – we’ve been promised a good comet this Fall…
Dac Crossley
July 27, 2013.
Happy Birthday, Bud F.
“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.” – Thoreau.