Gone like a shooting star
Got up this morning, Sunday, Nov. 18 at 3:45 because I heard something about a meteor shower around 4 due to passing comet debris. I looked out the window to see if the sky was clear but couldn’t really tell with orange halogens shining up and down the street. So I put on my shoes and jacket.
As soon as I walked out the door I saw my first shooting star. Not bad, I thought. It was a beautiful night. The early morning air was warm, a memory of the 70-degree temperatures of yesterday.
To see as much of the heavens as possible, I laid on the lawn where usually there is a half foot of snow by now. Ducks quacked and geese honked on North Lake. Semi tires screamed on I-94.
I started counting. Two. Three. Waited. Four. Waited. Five six. Soon I was up to 25, then 50, 75 and 100. Wow, I thought, 100 shooting stars way surpasses the most I’ve seen in one sitting, and was tempted to call it quits with that perfect number. Besides I was starting to shiver.
But they continued to come. Some two at a time. In the east, west, north and south. Some flying over Orion and a few over the Big Dipper as both worked their nightly routes across the sky. Some streaked leaving their image burned in the atmosphere for a few seconds. Some like mosquitoes barely caught my eye.
A bunch hit like flashcubes, small ones. Then one so big I could see a cloud of smoke or debris for at least a minute after–fireworks, I thought. Then two streaked at the same time, one going east and one south, crossing paths. And a few more flashed on the horizon. I turned my head too fast to catch sight of them all and got an awful cramp in my neck.
I counted 200. It was quiet. One here, one there. Then one so bright the flash filled the air though the meteor was hidden by a neighboring house. Then two more bursts from behind me or to the side. I couldn’t tell which. And I counted 300. A cat looked at me curiously and walked by.
I couldn’t give it up. Soon I was up to 400 and they were still falling beautifully. Ones that skipped off the mesosphere in a dotted line. Some that hit straight on, maybe heading right for me. Still others that burned blue-white, red or orange.
They fell in spurts. First one would enter the eastern part of the sky and I’d watch the same spot as another followed nearby. Then in the west. Then overhead streaking and flashing in all different directions. And some so awesome I had to take a deep breath before I could count them. Or I was starting to suffer hypothermia.
And it slowed. And I counted 500. By this time I was starting to curl up on my side, so I got up slowly and headed in, keeping my eye on the sky and catching four more. I checked the time, 5:29. After working out the math, I had seen at least five falling stars a minute and probably didn’t even catch them all with buildings in the way and my lack of 360-degree peripheral vision.
After making a cup of tea, I decided that since I was up I’d search for stragglers. Or at least I could watch the sun rise. I wrapped a blanket over my shoulders and head and went back out. I counted casually scanning mainly the south and southwestern skies.
I tallied four more and finished my tea. Some bright ones. Some not so bright. Then one like an orange ball of fire, like a softball, rolled over the treetops to the south-southwest as if it were going to hit Albany. It was there for three to five seconds and gone. Then two more seared almost completely vertical in the same spot, one ice blue and the other rocket red.
A few cars went by. One truck with a squeaking radiator belt picked up another guy. Probably to go duck hunting since they headed out the back of town into the countryside. The church bells rang across the lake from Seven Dolores. The sky was starting to orange in the east. And suddenly a bright beauty streaked overhead and a rooster crowed.
A dog barked. Birds started to chatter and the newspaper lady was on her route, coughing. The silhouette of a moth passed over and I thought I was seeing things though I’ve seen insects in the woods on a warm January day. And then the dun of a mourning dove.
The constellations began to disappear and the sky slowly turned a grayish hue. The washed morning blues, dark reds, yellows and greens of the houses appeared. Still a few bright meteors in the east flicked white down into the lake. And then the slow outline of an incoming goose and the whoosh of its wings.
I started to think that I should go in before someone thought I was crazy for staring at the sky. Clouds were moving in anyway. But before I turned, I glimpsed my 591st meteor of the night, or morning, between the last two stars on the western horizon. Just colorless white poofs like parallel jet trails. Only a hundred times faster.
That was seven o’clock in the morning. Now it’s eight and I’m tired, but I can’t help regret that I didn’t drive out to a field or the Great Plains and stay up the whole night to count more. Reports from Japan were that over a thousand could be seen there. Other accounts claimed it was the best show in decades. But like autumn, the shooting stars are gone and the sky, glum. The scent of snow is blowing in from the northwest.
A piece I wrote for the Stearns-Morrison Enterprise
