At three o’clock on Friday morning, August 12, I dragged my husband out of bed to go see shooting stars. I suspected it would be a hard sell. We live too close to the city to view all but the most obvious astronomical events from our backyard; we’d have to drive at least a half an hour, to the other side of the San Gabriel Mountains, to view the Perseid meteor shower at its peak, between moonset at 1 a.m. and dawn at around 6 a.m. But the astronomers and science writers and local blogs had promised it wouldn’t let us down: This would one would be no mere shower, but an “outburst,” thanks to Jupiter’s gravity pulling the comet dust closer to earth. It wouldn’t happen again for a decade and a year.
I was gentle; persistent. Billy, my husband, eventually gave in.
I knew what a good meteor show could portend. I have slept in the back of trucks to watch the December Geminids; planned camping trips around the April Lyrids. In November of 2001 I drove with my good friend Mari up to Mount Piños in the Los Padres National Forest to shiver in the presence of the Leonids, and reclined amid hundreds of strangers who howled in unison several times a minute, as if beholding an epic set of fireworks shot off by God. We saw so many flaming ice balls that night that, as we drove home near dawn, the streaking stars began to bore us. Meteors-schmeeteors, we muttered, and longed only for the comfort of our beds.
The Leonids had come at a rate of 800 to 4,000 an hour on November 18, 2001, ranking it a full-on meteor “storm.” It happens like that only once every 33 years, as the earth passes through the debris field of the comet Tempel-Tuttle when it draws close to the sun. I didn’t expect that level of crazy from the Perseid outburst; forecasts said that earthlings would see something like 160 to 200 blazing shards of Swift-Tuttle comet debris per hour. Dayenu, I figured. When the Leonids storm again in 2034 I will be very old if I’m lucky, and dead if my family history has anything to say about it; I have already outlived three-fifths of my immediate clan. I keep the covenant of once-in-a-good-long-while cosmic events whenever I can.
I laid the groundwork the night before, persuading Billy to load up the coffeemaker so I’d only have to press a button in the morning. He was snoring by 9:30 p.m. I, however, stayed awake, peering into the melatonin-disrupting blue light of my iPhone to Google-map our route to the closest dark place with a view. I settled on Vasquez Rocks County Park, 31 miles northeast, named for the bandit that once hid out among its 25 million year-old hogback ridges. On the far side of the San Gabriel Mountains from Los Angeles, we’d have a full view of the northeastern sky, and plenty of darkness. When the sun came up, we’d see some cool rocks.
We loaded sleepy dogs into their car crates, filled our thermoses to the brim, and headed north along the freeways that wind around the San Gabriels. I expected we’d find other revelers when we arrived, maybe even someone with a telescope; they’d always shown up at other comet-viewing events. But there was no one around. We parked outside the closed iron gate and walked in along the Pacific Crest Trail, spreading our double-wide sleeping bag across its path.
I was starting to worry. It was four o’clock in the morning. We both had full workdays ahead of us. On the drive out, the starscape as we passed from city lights to rural darkness had remained blithely still. I considered the possibility that I had persuaded my husband to leave his bed for nothing. I was seized with astronomical host anxiety.
We stretched out on our backs and waited. “There’s one!” Billy shouted. “Did you see it?” I didn’t, but I felt a keen sense of relief. Finally! I thought. It’s really happening. Then several more minutes passed. “Right there!” I said. “I saw one!” Ten or 15 more minutes went by, and we both detected another faint streak, followed by one glittery-tailed spectacle. That one was good, we agreed. Wow.
More time, a few yawns, some adjusting of limbs, a little more coffee. The dogs barked; a couple wandered out of the park and passed by without greeting us; we watched their silhouettes recede in the dark. The dogs turned circles in their places and nestled the sleeping curls of their bodies between us. We watched the sky. Orion’s belt was rising, the Pleiades were overhead. I pointed out the star Aldebaran, which an ex-boyfriend of mine used to call “that red guy in Taurus.” No more meteors.
Perhaps we were still too close to the city. Perhaps we were too late to hit the peak. Or perhaps the event was just a bit oversold. Whatever the reason, the meteor show as it appeared to us from Vasquez Rocks was rather a bust. The night, however, was not.
Billy and I lay there side by side in the quiet. The day’s impossible deadlines, next month’s expenses, the book chapter that won’t give way to a narrative, the pitch the latest editor ignored, the agent that hasn’t called back, the presidential election grinding away at our souls — all of it evaporated in the hot, circulating wind common to low mountains on the edge of a desert. We inhaled the familiar and comforting dust that reminded us of so many enchanted camping trips. I rested my head in my husband’s lap, he ran his fingers through my hair. Our breathing synchronized.
“This is nice,” he whispered. “I’m glad we did this.”
“Even though we didn’t see many meteors?” I asked.
“We did, though. We saw at least a half dozen.”
“In two hours,” I reminded him.
“How many did you want?”
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Top photo taken during peak Perseids on August 13 by Flickr user Raffaella Mattei. Evidently some people saw them, somewhere.
Absolutely lovely.