Friday Sunset Blogging

Funny story - well, funny for everyone except the Hell wife. I have asthma so running out of breath is something that's not exactly something that's a minor issue with me. I'm actually still quite healthy (knock on wood) and I still have lung capacity that exceeds three sigmas of the population. But allergies can be kind of devastating, and it's something I have to really watch closely or I can end up in the hospital. Hey, it's just life. At least I quit smoking (man was that dumb, eh?).

Anyways, I grew up living at 6,000 feet in the high plains of Colorado Springs at the foot of Pikes Peak (another 14,000 foot hunk o' rock)... I have the lung capacity and red blood count of a Sherpa - even after a decade of smoking. Kind of bizarre, I know. But that's how my body adapted to the situation. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like without the smoking. But never look back, I always say.

In any event, the Hell-wife was seriously worried about this high altitude trek. Due to the obvious advice of their lawyers, the organizers of this trip to the top of Mauna Kea to watch the sunset made a reasonable effort to warn off those with respiratory problems - asthma, being an obvious poster child for respiratory problem. So, the Hell wife was pretty seriously worried about how I'd react at 14,000 feet.

Again, I stress that I spent most of my life growing up at over 6,000 feet, and regularly spending quite a lot of time in my youth hiking at an altitude of over 9,000 feet - hell, the foothills around C. Spgs. were higher than that.

So anyways, we get to about 9,000 feet and the Hell wife - who grew up at sea level - starts to really get hit hard by high altitude sickness. Now, this isn't something to mess around with and it really isn't pleasant in the slightest. Still she was being a trooper and was determined to go to the top of the mountain.

Well, needless to say, by the time we got to the summit, she was not a happy camper. Growing up in Colorado, I was quite familiar with the symptoms, having seen people fall victim to high altitude sickness many, many times before. Heck, my little brother - who was born and raised in C. Spgs. had high altitude sickness. It's not something that I've found you can predict from the past of the poor innocent victims.

She spent the entire time on the summit desperately choking back the vomit. And she did a spectacular job. After one seriously ill advised foray past a telescope that was rotating, she took the better part of valor and managed to keep herself from emptying the contents of her stomach on the floor of the van. Amazing. Myself, I would have puked my guts out long ago - I always find throwing up early and often the quickest path to settling my stomach.

Anyways, that's the extent of the "funny story". Funny only in the respect that I find it often the case that what we worry about the most is likely the least worry that we should be having. My wife's reaction to an environment that doesn't even affect my asthmatically crippled state in the slightest is case in point.

Anyways, the whole experience was positive - and for me, at least, fantastic. After watching the sunset on the peak of Mauna Kea, we went back down to 9,000 feet to look at the amazing sea of stars that filled the night sky. Being in the middle of the pacific ocean on an island with trivial population which has specifically designed their public lighting systems to completely minimize light pollution can only be experienced - it simply cannot be described.

I stood for hours bathed in the light of a billion stars which form our galaxy. Looking into the heart of the milky way, I had a visceral sense of our sun's position in this massive galaxy we find ourselves in. I mean, it's not like it's obvious from looking at the stars in the sky. But given my almost obsessive fascination with what's out there, and the magic of the scientific advances of the 20th century, I've internalized our sun's position due to having seen artists renditions of this position - not to mention the zillions of actual photographs of similar galaxies to ours.

Wish I had a photograph that could convey what I saw on that crystal clear, moonless night at 9,000 feet in the middle of the Pacific ocean. All I can say is that it made me feel very much a part of this astoundingly immense universe that we call home. I really felt like I was composed of star dust - hundreds, if not thousands, of cycles of nuclei passing through the furnace of stars - fusing, exploding and then collapsing into yet another cycle.

Humbling. But at the same time, amazingly comforting.

I am the stuff of stars. What I am composed of on this plane will be recycled thousands of times beyond the time that I'm done with it. Soon - in the terms of the universe - my physical composition will be returned to the heart of a star.

Only to be blown out again in a repeat of the thousands of cycles that came before - a part of the super novas that came before and will continue after.

Myself, I find that rather comforting. I'm just riding the latest wave. Fuck politics - at least the politics of the immediate.

I'm a child of the stars.