The moon will be new on January 29. I will be outside, in the desert.
In 1997, when I spent a month out there, I got used to the slow, swinging rhythm of the night sky. The sun dropped down past Barstow and the planets began to gleam through the twilight. Over the shoulder of Kessler Peak they marched: the sheep, the bull, the sisters. Then the hunter Orion bearing a club, a priceless jewel hanging from his belt, strode in pursuit. It would be a mistake to confuse Taurus the Bull with the placid ruminating dullards that now roam the desert. Taurus was an aurochs, the wild progenitor of cattle, which survived in Europe until the Iron Age and was immortalized in constellation form. In the caves at Lascaux, an aurochs painted sixteen thousand years ago stands near a sprinkling of dots that just might represent the Pleiades. Taurus is fierce and dangerous, well able to kill a careless hunter, and Orion brave for his pursuit.
And then following on Orion’s heels, his hunting dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor. (Keeping close to Canis Major on the southern horizon, a constellation that provides my favorite astronomical pun: Puppis.) Canis Minor is one of those constellations that makes you say “yeah, right”: two medium-bright stars. The brightest, named Procyon, gives this naturalist’s brain a cramp: Procyon is the genus to which raccoons belong. Clearly, Orion needs to find a more reputable breeder of hunting dogs.
Canis Major, on the other hand, now there is a dog to be reckoned with, with actual feet and a tail. His nose is the second-brightest star in the sky, the brightest being the big one that burns your shoulders as you hike in the desert. A quarter century ago I lay out at night, on a fire road in the hills behind Berkeley, and watched Sirius blaze its shimmering, changing color. I tried to read sense into the changes, lying there with my naked eyes. Twenty-five years later I’m still trying.
The Moon sets three quarters of an hour later each night. The Moon will be new on January 29, and I will be outside, in the desert. I will stay, shivering in a sleeping bag, above five thousand feet. I will bring these.
