While we were moored at Stuart Island I was awakened by something. I went up in the cockpit to investigate ad was awestruck by the rising moon. It was bright orange and looked like the sun. I retrieved a blanket pillow and my camera and laid out under the stars and watched the moonrise. My camera couldn’t record what my eyes could see.
The size of the moon allowed me to see the details of it’s surface with the binoculars we keep on deck for spotting boats and other obstructions like driftwood or crab pots when we are under sail. The dark areas of the moon were once thought to be oceans and the bright landmarks mountains. They were called lunar marias which is which is latin for sea.
I remembered that Neil Armstrong set foot on Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) in 1969 and could imagine how many generations had viewed the moon like I was experiencing it and felt inspired to explore.
Equally impressive to me was the reflection of the moon on the water. As the moon got higher in the sky it got smaller and harder to see and yet it’s reflection moved closer and closer my boat. I had an epiphany about how this relates to the loss of loved ones or the distance between friends. The further you go away, the closer to me you become.
It has only been a year since my father passed away. I can no longer see him in person and yet his image appears in my mind. All conflict falls away and I am left with warm thoughts of him. Like the moon that rises and falls out of view, he has gone away and yet I feel closer to him than ever.
Just as I had this thought, a shooting star streaked across the starboard side of the boat. I couldn’t help but think it was a confirmation of my observation and personal truth about my sense of connectedness to the universe.
The astronomer Carl Sagan once said “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
When looking for that quote I came across a line from a poem by Nikita Gil that really spoke to me. She wrote:
93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames,
we are all just stars that have people names.
