I was out on foot before dawn last Wednesday morning. Pinpoints of starlight popped against the black sky and a waning moon, still high in the sky, reflected off the snow so brightly that I didn’t need a headlamp. Almost immediately I saw a shooting star. Not just a flicker and fizzle, but a long one, a real fireball with a trailing tail. Before that first one flamed out I saw a second one.
In the hour or so I was out, I saw a shooting star every few moments. There were so many illuminated things to look at — stars, shooting stars, the moon, an occasional satellite — that I had to keep reminding myself to glance down at the road every once in a while.
I was sure I was witnessing something unique — as if maybe I were the only person observing this gorgeous celestial spectacle. When I finally thought to look it up, though, it turns out it was the peak display of the Geminid Meteor Shower, which is not only an annual event but something I’ve seen before. Somehow I had forgotten, and seeing it felt like a new experience, kind of like how Winthrop’s Balloon Roundup surprises me anew each year.
By the time you read this, the shortest days of winter will be behind us and each sunrise will come a bit earlier. I always greet the return of the light with relief, but the dwindling darkness is bittersweet.
There is something magical about the dark, especially in the morning’s quiet hours: a sleeping household, the chickens’ chortling muffled inside the henhouse, the coyotes yipping as they lope across the fields. Aspens shimmer in moonlight, owls argue in treetops, and deer’s eyeballs blaze in a headlight’s beam.
Dawn doesn’t ease in gradually in the Methow Valley the way it does in other places, with imperceptible transitions between increasing gradients of light. Instead, it seems to brighten in distinct increments. Click — it’s one degree lighter now. Click — another.
I love this liminal time, no longer night but not yet day. The temperature drops a degree or two and mist rises from the river and lakes. The Pasayten turns pink and a fringe of light outlines the ridge east of the valley. And then the sun beams over the mountains and its bright glow creeps down the hills until it reaches the valley floor.
To savor this same moment again tomorrow, I will need to get up earlier.
