Cometary

 

             

COMETARY

 

On March 5, 1986, a frosty Wednesday, I rise at 4 a.m., disappointed once again to find a heavy cloud cover. For weeks I've been thinking about Halley's Comet. I want to locate it by myself, to have a personal encounter with the legendary mass that has inspired fear and awe for a thousand years. With a thermos of coffee, I drive to Jordan Lake, seeking the best location for an unobstructed view of the sky to the south and east, planning ahead for clear weather. 

        In the icy blackness—a strange milieu for a Southerner accustomed to bright warmth—I check out several dirt roads leading to peninsulas on the lake and choose Farrington Point, a boat landing with no light contamination and a panoramic southeast aspect. I drink from the thermos, feeling the comet's presence behind the clouds.

My only companion is a stray cat that meows and rubs my ankles, then lifts its tail and walks away. A strong wind off the lake whistles in my ears, chills my face. Water laps the concrete beach and something skitters through the underbrush to my left. I feel a threat in the frigid gloom, the solitude, and hurry back to my car, the night an impenetrable wall beyond the narrow beam of my flashlight.

 

Star of Bethlehem or Halley's Comet?

The cat is grooming itself in a patch of sunlight when I return to Farrington Point at noon on Thursday. I speak to it, wishing I'd thought to bring it a piece of cheese. In the bright light of day I decide I'll find no better place to see the comet, if only the weather cooperates and gives me a clear night sky.

At forty-six, unemployed for the first time in thirty years, I'm living alone on my meager savings in a converted tobacco barn in Chatham County, writing and studying writing. I've become a vegetarian, have sold my television and stopped the daily paper, keep the radio tuned only to music.

Friday afternoon I call the weather service and the report for Saturday morning is both daunting and promising: 25 degrees and clear. I go to my sister's for supper and urge her and her teenaged sons to join me at Farrington Point on Saturday morning. The boys are impressed that they are two of the lucky ones who might see the comet twice in a lifetime.

At almost eighteen, Reid's standard look is a mixture of boredom and curiosity. He's not enthusiastic about going out into the frozen predawn with his mother and his aunt, but he likes the idea of a comet watch. David's boyish face is developing angles that bear a shadowy fuzz. At fifteen, he is skinny, strong, eager. We agree to meet at four the next morning at Farrell's Store on Farrington Road.

Saturday, March 8. Along with my hat, coat, and gloves, I have on two sweaters, flannel pants, wool socks, my fleece-lined boots. It's twenty degrees when I leave the barn just before four and come as close as I can to praying before looking up, afraid I'll once again encounter clouds. I gasp at the magnitude of the heaven-scape. Even from the shelter of the trees that embrace the barn, I feel I could touch the stars if I were just a foot taller. Ursa Major, the first constellation I learned as a child, is directly overhead, leading my eyes as always to Polaris. When I start the car, my teeth are chattering, as much from excitement as from the bitter cold.

I live in the boondocks, where the traffic is mostly local, and fully expect to be the only one out. Generally it's just a few minutes to the boat ramps from the barn. But at Farrington Road, I'm confronted with a stream of cars bumper-to-bumper from Chapel Hill going south toward Jordan Lake. It takes me five minutes to turn onto the road, and there's no way I can cross it, pull into Farrell's Store, and get back into the traffic. Giving up hope of connecting with Susan and the boys, I head for the lake. Because I've been living in a news-less vacuum, I'm unaware that Morehead Planetarium has plastered the media with announcements for an official comet watch on this same Saturday morning. Farrington Point, telescopes, astronomers. The traffic is barely moving, so I pull onto the shoulder, park my car, and walk the last mile in a solid throng.

1680 Painting

Generally I avoid crowds. I don't like being squashed in with crying babies, barking dogs, fervent fans of anything. I am particularly averse to being jostled by strangers in a total blackout. A fellow cynic walking near me calls out, "Programs, get your programs here." Laughter rolls through the crowd, breaking the tension that's been building in me ever since I realized that my longed-for private viewing of Halley's was not to be.

The comet watchers are funneled onto Farrington Point Road. The horde thickens and available light diminishes as cars are parked, headlights turned off. In the dense dark I follow a white-jacketed figure, then ask, lightly touching the coat, "Do you know where you're going?" The man turns and says, "No. I'm following the people in front of me. What we have here is a massive act of faith." I, of course, know where I am going, but not how I'm going to get there through the crush. I am bitterly disappointed that I won't be sharing the comet with my sister and my nephews, but am determined to see it regardless.

Eventually I get to the ramps where the sky is unobstructed to the southeast—except for a multitude of milling bodies. There are muted flashlights here and there, people bending to look through scopes, but the bustle becomes subdued the closer I get to the landing. It's as if people are sharing a religious experience, talking in intense murmurs, a restrained thrill in the hushed voices. We have a common goal, helping each other find the comet, standing shoulder to shoulder in the impenetrable dark, searching the sky. We laugh and talk and touch in a way we would not in the light of day. Making my way through the crowd, I hear over and over the same words, "Yeah, I see it. Wow."

"Where? Toward the horizon? I don't see it."

"That fuzzy thing? That's it?"

"I still can't find it." This last voice is male.

A female voice says, "Here, get in front of me and look down my arm. See that lopsided square?"

"The trapezoid?"

"Yeah. Look at the bottom star and go to seven o'clock from there."

After a pause, the man speaks reverently, "I see it."

I don't want to interrupt them, but the fever is running high and I tap the woman on the shoulder. "Can you show me?"

"Sure. It's the lowest thing in the sky, kind of peach-colored and fuzzy, there." She points and I see it.

I am entranced. By looking at the locator star in Sagittarius rather than directly at the comet, I can even see the tail. The man offers binoculars. Through the lens the comet looks like all the pictures, complete with the spectacular cloud of gas that trails it. While I'm standing there, trying to clear my eyes of tears so I can continue to look, I hear a man behind me say, "That's it? It's not even moving. We’re freezing our butts out here and it's no big deal."

I whisper, "It is a big deal. A real big deal."

The woman next to me says, "Yes."

 

                    1070 Bayreuth Tapestry; Norman Conquest & crowning of King Harold

 

                                            "They marvel at the star." (Tapestry detail.)

At the scritch of a match, a flare of light, a whiff of cigarette smoke, the woman says, "Damn it, put that thing out. Show some respect."

I walk around, listening to people react to the comet, shivering and stumbling in the inkiness. In the rumble of voices I hear Susie say, "A.J.?" I reach out and there she is. She grabs me. "I just knew you were close." We hug each other and laugh about how we thought we'd be the only ones on this desolate landing at four in the morning.

With pride I point out the comet to my nephews, telling David that he can always remember where it was in the sky in 1986—beneath Sagittarius, his constellation. In the beam of a nearby flashlight I see Reid's lanky six-foot-three body bend almost double as he looks through the scope of an amateur astronomer. He asks, "How far away is it?"

"Only 39 million miles right now." I tell him one of the few facts I know for sure.

"How big is it?" He asks.

Someone nearby answers, "The nucleus is ten by five by five miles."

I nudge Reid, "It would fit nicely between Chapel Hill and Durham, but its peak would overshadow Everest."

"Why does it keep coming back?"

"Same reason we do. It's orbiting the sun."

Reid's usual above-it-all demeanor has vanished.

                                                             

                                                        1986 Halley's Comet & planet Earth

David asks why people are so charged up about the comet, how someone came to spot it in the first place, and why some people fear it. I listen to the answers to his questions, storing the information for further rumination when I'm back in my warm bed.

Dawn is breaking as I get in my car, eyes burning from lack of sleep. I'm glad I was among the masses on this numbing early morning on Farrington Point. Amazed that so many local folks got up before daybreak to see it. Pleased I got to share the experience with family after all. I want to get to my journal, write about hearing an old voice say, "Just think, Grandaddy's seen it twice, and maybe you will, too."

On the drive home, the scant facts I know about the comet fill my thoughts: Edmond Halley saw it in 1682 and foretold its return in 1758. He was right, but he died before it came back. The comet, which looks like a burning sphere trailing molten cinders, is actually frozen gas and rocks. Its brilliant light is merely a reflection of the sun, and solar wind creates the tail. The average orbit is 76 years, a human lifespan. Mark Twain was born when it appeared in 1835 and went out with it in 1910, as he predicted would happen.

  1910 cartoon

After breakfast, I crawl into bed for a morning nap, remembering the cat whose home was invaded by the hordes. Is it back to scavenging fish at the landing ramps? Does it see a difference in the sky? I snuggle beneath my comforter, fascinated with the thought that a cat might be aware of a change in the stars, pondering my own feelings of connectedness to the comet. I knew it was there, so I had to see it. That knowledge is what separates me from the ancients. Five hundred years ago, if I had looked up and seen it, I might have thought it an evil omen or a god.

Stargazing was our first science. Before we learned about the earth, we studied the sky. We connected the dots, drawing lions and bears and stick-figure gods, moved our campfires around and found our way home at midnight by looking up. We crossed oceans and squeezed our planet down to navigable size, using nothing but magnets and stars. And from studying the sky we learned that the universe does not revolve around us.

We only recently realized that the comet is a regular visitor, that every 76 years our primitive art takes on a new element, a dazzling ball of ice moving through the sky, crossing the  stick-figure gods with its majestic tail. And always somewhere on earth there is pestilence or famine, a plague or the Norman conquest, creating fear of the fiery streak that disorders our familiar constellations. Even now, with computers and space probes to explain away the magic, we huddle in the dark and gaze at the heavens in wonder. 

39,000,000 miles from Earth in 1986

Copyright Anna Jean Mayhew—April 2024

Road Rage 2021

 

Stories don't have to be made up; sometimes they just fall into my lap and it's my job to record them (fictional elaboration allowed). Wednesday I was leaving Subway (the one near Walmart here in Hillsborough). Stopped at a stop sign in the parking lot, looked both ways, and proceeded. Whiz! An aqua blue car barreled toward me on the right, doing at least 45 mph (in a parking lot—okay, it's a road that runs through a parking lot, but still…). I slammed on my brakes, narrowly avoiding a collision, and as she flew by the woman driver honked her horn and gave me the finger. The scowl on her face became a photo in my mind. I went on to my next short errand, and was on my way again in about 10 minutes.

I turned left onto Highway 86 ("new" 86, as we call it here). Crossed over I-85 where a sign on the overpass always gives me a smile, "Tolerance Ends."

And came to a stop in a long line of cars before the entrance/exit ramps; soon realized that the holdup was an accident a little way ahead of me. One of the two cars involved was the aqua car that had raced by me in the Walmart parking lot. The driver stood by her car, apparently unhurt, assessing the awful damage to the front end: hood accordioned and popped open, a smashed-up mess. The other car had damage to the rear end. Several people stood there, and I assumed whoever was in the other car was okay, but I really don't know.

 

When I got home I told Jean-Michel about this, and in the telling said I felt oddly sorry for the woman who'd almost collided with me. She must have had a reason for going so fast in a parking lot, and for slamming into the rear end of another car just minutes later. An emergency? A bad day? A broken heart? A death in the family? Or just a distracted, out-of-sorts, angry woman using her accelerator to express her fury. I've been there, have driven that way, hell-bent on demonizing the highway in my rage. I'm so grateful to be an old woman whose anger switch is mostly turned off. And deeply thankful that I wasn't a split second faster leaving Subway.