A Sunset. Thanks to Dick Ward, this is about a Sunrise.
Two things of substance occurred during my day
yesterday. The first and most obvious
was the length of my ride. Starting at
exactly 0400, I left Junction, Texas
and terminated at the VOQ at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson ,
Arizona
Second, and far more interesting, was my observation of a
most spectacular sunrise and moon set in the high deserts of West Texas . There are some preparatory observations to
set the stage. It is 39 degrees at departure.
It did not get above 52 until 1000.
The temperature is a non-issue because I wear heated gear
when the temperature gets below 45 degrees as a high for the day. Some,
perhaps most, will say that if it is that cold you do not need to ride that
day. Without finding fault with this position, my own philosophy differs
significantly, It is my opinion that we
all are on the clock. When the clock is
going to stop, is a universal mystery.
To squeeze all that I can from whatever it is I have left, seems not
only reasonable but necessary. There are
no promises that we will survive the night.
We must fulfill the promises of the next day in a way
commensurate with our skills, desires and resources. So I preach Carpe
Diem.
In this case, the cold brings two related weather phenomenon
together. The first is low humidity. This is a desert that receives scant rain and
retains even less. The second is high
altitude. The low humidity means few
clouds or hazes close to the ground and because we are at a moderate altitude,
the thickness of the light refracting layer is reduced which adds to clarity. The result is a full moon at its highest
point in this fall sky and almost directly over head. There are little if any
pollutants borne by this air. The air
has an aroma and a texture that add to its wonder. The aroma is not so much an identifiable odor
as it is an absence of all odors. It is
clean! If my wife, Margaret, were to
describe this air, she would hold up her hand and gently scrub her finger tips
across her palm and whisper
the word “soft”.
So it is a “soft” cold air that rolls around the black fairing
of the Gold Wing while the vortexes seek every opening in your clothing to put
a chill on your skin. But these openings
are few and most of the air finds it way around the fiberglass bags to join the
atmosphere it left for just a moment. With these feelings of the early morning air, the solitude of an almost empty
road, a full moon in my view with the glory of the sun soon to follow in my
mirrors, I am at peace.
This moon…this moon is not a moon to bay at! This is not a moon to spoon by! This is not a moon for men to land on, this
is a moon of dreamers. This moon is the
color white only glimpsed during the first few seconds of a thermonuclear
explosion. A white without shades of
gray or any other visual detractor. It
is as clear and sharp as the 10 mega pixel photo you edit in Photo Shop. This very special moon was hung over my head
by the math of gravity and the physics of gravitational pull. This moon is a warm up band for the Charlie
Daniels main show which is about to begin.
Only the Mary Jane is missing.
I clear the small town of Junction ,
Texas and the minimal amount of
lights it had burning at 0400. After
about 14 minutes, my eyes become, more or less, accustomed to the darkness and
it awakens an old and justifiable fear in the very essence of my soul.
I fear the sudden
appearance of a deer that comes into my vision too late for me to make any move
to avoid its deadly mass. It is an
overpowering feeling of helplessness.
The un-mowed summer grass along the side of the road is
waist high and dead from the drought and is a perfect hiding place for the big
eyed Bambies.
This is, at once, a visceral fear for my physical survival
and a cognitive fear of the darkness. The
darkness looks soft and friendly, but hides the demons who call for the demise of riders who ignore the signs of danger.
These ruminations bring to a halt my musings about poetry
and prose and, instead, focus on survival.
I begin to think of ways for me to overcome this scenario.
What I need is a pulling guard to get in front of me to take the initial shock of impact and let me escape with little or no injury.
What I need is a pulling guard to get in front of me to take the initial shock of impact and let me escape with little or no injury.
I can do this. I slow
down to 55 and wait. I wait for a pickup truck doing the speed I am interested
in employing. Sure enough, here he
comes. He goes by me like I had good
sense. I throttle up the Wing and I am
soon ensconced in his protective shadow of iron and an additional 200 feet of road shoulder
illumination by his head lights. Once I
have his speed mastered, I can relax a little. I keep this up until my pulling guard gives
me a head fake and exits into the diminishing dark probably happy to be rid of
my constant pressure behind him. With
the guy in front of me gone, the grass on the shoulders now just recently mowed,
and a moon, beaming rays of white light over the desert, I pick up my study of
the setting of the moon and the opposite rising of the sun. As I drive through the dark, it is easy to
follow the moon from its apogee over the earth to its ultimate demise in the
waters of the Pacific .
The sport is not just to view these two events, but to join
the wonder that our creator has made available to us if we will just look. Since I was wearing a balaclava type head
dressing, no one would have been able to see me smile in complete delight as I
witness this once a day event from a very special vantage point.
Thus, at first look, the moon is directly overhead and very
hard to see and ride the bike simultaneously.
Once I get a good look at the moon, I check my mirrors for signs of
sunrise behind me. As time goes by, I
continue to look at the moon which is now below 60 degrees above the horizon
and there is no change in its countenance, nor any sign of light from the
horizon behind me. I am looking about every five minutes and then with a blind
motion, I point my camera over my shoulder in the general direction of the
horizon behind me, without looking, and get the following:
Just a few minutes later, here is another view through my
right mirror.
What is missing, of course, is a description of the colors
changing. My view is constantly changing
because of the wash board affects of the wadis that cross the road and by doing
so, changes the hues because it changed the relationship of the atmosphere to
the object being viewed. Too much detail
you say and you may be right.
The moon is in a black sky with the sun shattering the atmosphere with
burnt oranges and sprays of powerful reds and atomic yellows just hours behind
it. I check the moon and its sky has
lightened just ever so much but there are no colors. I check out the road for critters, come
inside and check the gages then back out to the heavens and my mirrors that
mark the progress of moon and sun. Its
been another five minutes since I looked at the moon. It is now suspended about
15 degrees above the horizon in a gentle gender pink belt holding it above a
boyish but sturdy cloud of blue that falls like a drapery behind the west Texas
mountains. Above the pink belt is a
portion of the firmament whose is reluctantly giving in to the stronger forces
of the sunrise and its milky white is soon refracting the suns rays creating
the now all familiar blue sky.
Here is the view with a full sun behind me and the moon
losing its dominance over the sky: The
moon appears very small in this pic. Look just above the intersection of the
windshield and the ridge top and you will see the pale planet.
When the sun has one half of its orb visible, I reach a
valley whose floor is marked with one wadi after another. This means the bike climbs and descends these
wadiis and I am blessed with seeing this sun rise four times before it is
complete. Interestingly enough, the
temperature went up and down from 39 to 52 and back again repetitively over a
period of one hour. I spent the rest of
the day passing and being passed by vehicles that were, for the most part, well
behaved drivers as we ground out the miles at 81 MPH .
I regret that you could not have been with me to share this
experience.
