Hats Off To Hyakutake
I laced up my Sorels, pulled on my winter coat and Angora hat and stepped outside with a monocular. I found I did not need it to see the comet. Hyakutake’s sleek blue tail stole distinctly across the night sky.
The crescent moon startled me with its intensity as I walked into its light. The breeze which freshened my face had also spring-cleaned the heavens. The moon cast its gleam across the dormant window boxes and threw my shadow onto the alfalfa field.
It was a still night on Earth, the acres I inhabit anyway. Not one cough from the deer. And the coyote were absent. Only the soft interchange of two Great Horned owls and the thrum of Latah Creek - its song slightly amplified by the basalt cliffs.
I don’t spend enough time looking at the stars. I have no excuse. There are no city lights which obscure my vision. I am not that familiar with the constellations. Yet, I readily recognized Hyakutake as something different than the usual, something present in that black void of sky where there was once nothing.
Something pleasing had appeared on my visual landscape which man had not put there. Maybe this is what made it so special. So alluring and as mystical as it appeared the night I looked - a blue ball with a faint trail of celestial dust.
The newspaper informed me that it has been 20,000 years since a comet such as Hyakutake passed near the Earth. Immediately I felt connected with those who once looked toward the stars from their caves. This connection excited me in an unspoken way. And I relished the thought that over the last 20,000 years people haven’t discovered why this comet (or any comet for that matter) really exists. Like children we are still free to imagine.
And what I imagined when I gazed at Hyakutake was that the river thrummed to applaud the comet. And the 213 stars that I counted, of individual strengths and infinite twinkles, came out also to salute Hyakutake. And so did the wind, the moon, the owls in the trees.
And me in my Angora hat.
MEMO: Your Turn is a feature of the Wednesday and Saturday Opinion pages. To submit a Your Turn column for consideration, contact Rebecca Nappi at 459-5496 or Doug Floyd at 459-5466 or write Your Turn, The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615.