to infinity and beyond

With the bright lights of city life, the twinkle of the night sky gets muted. A memorable moment for me was my first time on LSD and staring at the night sky above Joshua Tree. The dancing clouds amidst the backdrop of distant stars and moonlight was a visual art performance to behold.

I did not realize though that our atmosphere with the haze, air flow and moisture tend to distort the night sky with extinction (dimmer) and seeing (blurry), including airglow and aurora, reflections of light back onto us. At almost 14,000 feet above sea level and with its arid climate and stable airflow, Mauna Kea has one of the best conditions for stargazing. Continuing with new templates...the party continues (rub-a-dub-dub), laying on sacred land to glimpse the planets and other glowing orbs seem to be a fascinating new experience to an ancestral memory of native life.

"The best way to know if land is truly undiscovered is to seek words to describe it. When you can't, you know it's virgin land. Untouched by our dirty hands. To see it is to be silenced by it. Made speechless by its endless uniformity...

To crest a rise is to see another that is identical. One must read the sun and stars like a sailor to navigate this place. We've seen nothing but grass for over a week: no game, no birds, no snakes, not even a lizard, and no evidence the human race still exists... 

The dirty hand of man can go unnoticed in the city. Because his dirty hand made the city. But in this place, where innocence is a mineral in the soil, the filth of our touch is an apocalypse."

~ Elsa Dutton (1883 - Season 1, Episode 7)

In addition to the conservation and protection of the surrounding lands, laws ensure minimal light pollution around the island. Only 4x4s are allowed up to the summit. Lava rocks as far as the eye can see, there doesn't seem to be any life around as we ascended with periodic reminders to be mindful of altitude sickness. We are blessed with sunrises on the Hilo side but as we continued our climb up to the summit, the barrenness was filled with the juxtaposition of the amber and indigo hues from the West and East of the island.

Snuggled under blankets, breathing in the crisp, cold air, I was silenced by the awesomeness all around me. Without the atmosphere blurring what we see, humans can see approximately 5,000 stars with the naked eye. Absent the distortion from the Earth's atmosphere, I could even see the outline of the dark side of the moon as it sunk from the horizon of the ever-changing night sky, a reminder that not only the Earth is still spinning but also the moon is orbiting us.

Milky Way

What I thought were wisps of clouds turned out to be the Milky Way, as I was quickly reminded that we were above the clouds. I had overheard others nearby exclaiming sightings of shooting stars. While I was silently declaring that I wanted to see a shooting star before we left, I quickly dashed the thought away, as an emphasis to myself to be open to the experience without any expectations. I was rewarded with not one but two shooting stars, satellites and even a ... UFO sighting.

My friend was commenting that he hoped to see a UFO. I felt as if I had split with a part of me listening to his words and the other part completely entranced by a light, different than the other orbs in the sky. Unlike the satellites that we saw that night that seemed to glide by the stars in a trajectory, this one appeared to be flitting. Without thinking, I soon cut him off and asked if he sees this, pointing in the direction to guide his eyes. Just as he said it was getting brighter, it soon looked like it ascended as the light dimmed and then disappeared.

Birthdays have always been a day of reflection for me. Most of them have come with sadness...a wanting and wondering if and where I went astray from my path or destiny. Heading up Mauna Kea, I was in awe of what I was seeing ahead of us while my friend was admiring the beauty in his rear view mirror.

"There is an Indian proverb that goes, 'Sometimes, the wrong train takes you to the right station.' It was like that for me, too. Throughout my life, I always felt like I was on the wrong train. One time, I wanted to give up. I didn't want to go anywhere. So I thought about jumping off the train.

Look where I am now. I took the wrong train again, and a very wrong one at that. It even got me across the 38th parallel! 

Still, you should think about the future even if things don't always go as you wish. I wish you could be happy ... I want you to arrive at the right station no matter which train you take."

~ Yoon Se-Ri (CLoY - Episode 5)

As I looked through the side mirror when he told me to look at the view behind us, I was too focused on capturing the picture but as I scrolled through my photos tonight, what laid ahead and behind me were vastly different. In the present moment, it feels much like I got on the wrong train again, and like Se-Ri at that moment, we can derisively laugh at our situations. Yet, on this day, for a split second, in a moment of reflection, perchance, one can see a beauty in the snapshot in time where things may not have gone as I had wished but the wrong train did give me this moment of pulchritudinous respite of nature.

In the end, will destiny eventually guide me to the right station regardless of the countless wrong trains I had to take to get to bliss? Thinking about the future sounds akin to ... hope (ftale).