Part-time prevaricator
The moon tonight is very full and very bright, and there’s a tiny little speck of light juuuuuust about touching it. I checked and it turns out it’s Mars.
(I realize I kind of gave it away in the title. So it goes.)
[Edit] I just realized it’s also the 50th anniversary today of the launch of Apollo 17, the last crewed mission to the moon. Here’s to the continued success of the Artemis project and the return of humans to the lunar surface.
We went down to Boissevain on the weekend to help out with the Dunrea Flea Market[1]It rather outgrew the available space in Dunrea., and stayed over at our friends’ farmhouse a few miles south of town. There were a few shows put on by the Northern Lights that night; I caught one of them. They danced for about 20 minutes while I watched. Here are some of the photos I got.
I tried to capture a panorama, to show just how much of the sky was involved. Unfortunately my image-stitching program balked at creating a panorama; the aurora were moving too much for the software to find similarities in the photos. I manually aligned them instead.
And I did up a quick timelapse. The 33 seconds of video represents about 33 minutes of photos, each one a 5‑second exposure.
When the show was winding down, I turned around and saw that the Milky Way was high above the farm. One more photo, I thought, then I’ll go inside.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | It rather outgrew the available space in Dunrea. |
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My friend Tim was camping at Wasagaming, as is his wont on the September long weekend. I went to visit on Friday evening.
We headed up to Spruces to check out the sunset…
…and the moon.
Later, the galaxy appeared as the moon set.
And I decided to try to catch Jupiter with my 55–250mm lens, which is usually too shaky at 250mm. It seems to have worked. (If I’m reading this right, the moons are, L‑R, Callisto, Europa, and Io.)
After I dropped Tim off at his campsite, I saw that the aurora were making an appearance. I stopped in a few places (the beach in Wasagaming[1]Man, I really don’t like the orange lights at the beach, the dock on the golf course road, and on the roadside on #10 highway).
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Man, I really don’t like the orange lights at the beach |
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How’d I do against my goals?
All in all, this was a good retreat. As always, I wish it had been longer, but you know what they say: so it goes.
In the morning I wrote my 1,000 words after breakfast, then read a few more chapters in Catch-22. Man, that book is convoluted; I think it’s a good re-read, especially considering that my current project is somewhat non-linear too.[1]It crossed my mind, as I was in the kayak, that Peace and Jacob’s Ladder will also have interesting things to say to me, as I write this tale. But I think I’ll wait till the first draft is done.
After lunch I went to the coffee shop to post yesterday’s missive, then—since the weather was, if anything, more lovely than yesterday—I took the kayak out onto the lake again. As I was returning, I checked my distance, and found I’d gone 4.31 km. I decided that another quick pass by the public beach/floating play structure and back should easily add another 0.69 km, and I was right—my final distance as I beached my craft was just over 5 km. I can live with that.
I read a bit more, had supper—the last of the burgers I barbecued, which leaves only 6.02×10²³ smokies, cool cool cool. And now I’m about to start writing, with a glass of iced coffee[2]Made from the dregs of my morning coffee, poured into a glass and stored in the fridge, where it developed a thin skin of ice. beside me.
The sky was cloudless after dark, so I packed my gear and headed north for a few kilometers. I found a nice dark spot on a side road just before the entry to the river valley, and shot some photos of the Milky Way again.
She walked toward the lake. Her sandals filled with sand, fine and soft as talc, annoying her. She took the sandals off and carried them, looping their straps over her middle and index fingers and crooking her hand into a loose fist at her side. The sandals’ heels thumped her thigh softly with every step, which was a different kind of annoying.
At the edge of the water the sand darkened, not because it was wet, she saw, but because words had snagged in it, lay flat on it: water-coloured sans-serif letters overlapping in senseless profusion. A million thes and as and saids in blue and aquamarine and smoke grey were scattered as far as she could see, and tens of thousands of words less common—less invisible as one of her editors had put it—were layered below and above, freshly deposited or soaking into the sand, darkening, disappearing: birth, house, joy, sparrow, rose, formidable. Soft wavelets made of bluish words capped with small white wordcaps dropped new words as she watched, the white foam of window whirl bribe fading, darkening, becoming part of the great smear of words.
She set her sandals down where the sand was still heartbreakingly bright, where the waves hadn’t come in and crested and crashed only to recede. Where the paper was still unblemished, the page still holy and blank. She walked into the water; no, the lake of words.
Water isn’t wet, she remembered someone telling her, after someone else had made the “water wet, fire hot, sky blue” joke at some TV report about a new discovery that was painfully obvious if you just applied common sense. Water makes other things wet, but wetness, he told her, jabbing a finger to make his point stick (and it must have worked, because here she was thinking about it) is not an intrinsic property of the water itself.
The words touched her and did not feel wet, did not wet her ankles or (as she progressed) her calves. They clung to her as water would, molding themselves against her shapes. She felt transom and forget and peace against the backs of her knees, in amid the whirling yeses and saids and thes. She walked further, deeper. Her skirt didn’t cling against her as it would in water, but the words crowded onto its dark fabric too. The tail of her blouse was decorated with now and together, dried and he.
She took a breath and ducked under the surface.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | It crossed my mind, as I was in the kayak, that Peace and Jacob’s Ladder will also have interesting things to say to me, as I write this tale. But I think I’ll wait till the first draft is done. |
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| ↑2 | Made from the dregs of my morning coffee, poured into a glass and stored in the fridge, where it developed a thin skin of ice. |
Today, after breakfast, I sat down and wrote about 1,500 words (I really wanted to get the manuscript up over 39,000, and I just managed it). Then I read for a bit, and around lunch hopped into the car to go check out Big Valley.
Continue reading “Writing Retreat 2022: Wednesday”
Last night, the aurora data looked good, and also the sky was clear (unlike other nights lately). I packed my camera and tripod, then headed out to one of my favourite spots (Twin Pines Field, let’s call it) about 10:45pm.
The temperature dropped while I was out, going from about 24°C to 17°C. Everything got coated with a slick of dew, including—as you can see in the last photo—my lens[1]Actually, it was the transparent UV filter over the lens, which was much easier to wipe clean. Phew..
All told, I shot almost a thousand images, each one a 5‑second exposure[2]Nerds: 11mm, 5s, f/2.8, ISO 3200., which conveniently means that making a timelapse at 12 frames a second creates a video where 1 second of video = 1 minute of real time. So my hour and twenty minutes at Twin Pines Field condenses into a minute and twenty seconds for your edutainment.
Enjoy!
The aurora forecast was great, but the earthly forecast was clouds, clouds, clouds. I ventured out anyway, hoping against hope for a small break in the clouds.
On the back road I chose, there were clouds all around, and lightning—lots of it—to the south and east. I didn’t hear any thunder, but there were moments where the clouds lit up from within. I managed to get one bright bolt in focus.
Looking up, I saw that there was indeed a break in the clouds, just large enough for Jupiter to shine through. If you view the photo full-size, you’ll see two moons as well: Callisto on the left and Ganymede on the right (if I’m using this tool correctly).
Then, before heading home, I decided to take a couple shots of the northern sky. There was a hint of green to it. This is the best photo I managed of the aurora trying to peek through the clouds.
And then I went home.
About 20km from my house, it’s dark enough for photos like these.
Nerdy details: all photos were shot at 11mm, f/2.8, 30 seconds, 3200 ISO. The landscape-oriented image is a panorama stitched from 12 photos (which explains the gravity-defying hydro lines).
Compare and contrast: Last month.
These photos were taken very early on July 1st, between about midnight and half past one, about 2 miles east of the junction of Highways #2 and #10.
All the photos—including the 180 in the timelapse—were taken at 11mm, 20 second exposure, f/2.8, ISO 3200. (Can you spot the fireflies?)