Sometimes I’m actually quite lucky I don’t get to be somewhere or do something at the time I plan on it, which happens about half the instances I plan on anything in this town. I’m trying to make a point of looking at the other side of the coin. Wanting what I get when I get it in other words.
Today I missed daytime running in Central Park on what was for all appearances rather warm pre-spring day. I ended up there in the evening, doing the lower half and a couple of laps around the reservoir, and on my first lap of it noticed the Moon seemed a bit odd, dim even. Of course, today was the lunar eclipse and here I was right at midpoint, just as the Earth was getting ready to move away from the orbit of the Sun, in what was probably one of the best, most unobstructed places to view it in the city.
What an odd, beautiful thing to see the Moon this way, the subtle cast of light rendering the moon’s surface with a depth and form otherwise not that noticeable on a normal celestial evening. There were perhaps over a dozen people out there watching with binoculars and cameras, one chap let me take a peek when I stopped to ask for some information. It was one of those magical moments, the reservoir bathed in an eerie blue glow still had ice on it, and Canadian geese were paddling in the open shallows making low cackling sounds.
And yet there were people in the park who had no idea, walking around without looking upward. The Earth slowly moved and the light came back to the Moon emerging as a growing crescent. There wasn’t much time left, and so, high on that natural phenomenon rush I get when the curtains on the bigger picture are so easily revealed, I made a point of telling people what was happening on my return back to the YMCA, even alerting a guy on a smoke break who immediately went to the corner to check it out.
Had I been there any earlier I would have missed it.
Today I missed daytime running in Central Park on what was for all appearances rather warm pre-spring day. I ended up there in the evening, doing the lower half and a couple of laps around the reservoir, and on my first lap of it noticed the Moon seemed a bit odd, dim even. Of course, today was the lunar eclipse and here I was right at midpoint, just as the Earth was getting ready to move away from the orbit of the Sun, in what was probably one of the best, most unobstructed places to view it in the city.
What an odd, beautiful thing to see the Moon this way, the subtle cast of light rendering the moon’s surface with a depth and form otherwise not that noticeable on a normal celestial evening. There were perhaps over a dozen people out there watching with binoculars and cameras, one chap let me take a peek when I stopped to ask for some information. It was one of those magical moments, the reservoir bathed in an eerie blue glow still had ice on it, and Canadian geese were paddling in the open shallows making low cackling sounds.
And yet there were people in the park who had no idea, walking around without looking upward. The Earth slowly moved and the light came back to the Moon emerging as a growing crescent. There wasn’t much time left, and so, high on that natural phenomenon rush I get when the curtains on the bigger picture are so easily revealed, I made a point of telling people what was happening on my return back to the YMCA, even alerting a guy on a smoke break who immediately went to the corner to check it out.
Had I been there any earlier I would have missed it.
posted by Stewart A. Williams at
8:31 AM
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