August Firesky
Okay here's the story... for you, Ryan The Girl.
A few years ago I had this infatuation with a silly girl... and she was obsessed with stars and the night sky. Now, at this point in my life I didn't really have a strong liking for star gazing... no more than the average fellow... but I had a strong liking for the girl and was intrigued by her passion for astronomy. For her birthday, I wanted to get her some books on the subject... something she might find interesting enough to enjoy. The last of about thirty books I picked off the shelf was called The Starry Room. -A collection of essays and short stories about the night sky and how best to view it. After reading just one story, I too fell in love with star gazing. (I even asked for and received a telescope for christmas later that year) Anyway, That night I stayed at Barnes and Noble until they closed just sitting quietly on the floor in the Astronomy section reading this book. Cover to cover. I took notes about it in my notebook that I carry around. There was one chapter that really grabbed me. I wrote A LOT in my notebook about it. Something about about a place the author referred to as Dyer Cove... and the August Perseid Meteor showers. The Perseid Meteor showers occur annually from about July until the end of August... with the peak viewing nights being from August 10-21st. The meteors pour out the Northeast sky from the belly of the constellation 'Perseus', but theyre just fragments of a comet called Swift-Tuttle. The writer urged me to visit but failed to give me any direction as to where it was. No state... not even a region. I found that the most exciting part though. I think the author wanted to share this gold mine with other enthusiasts but only with the ones that were serious enough to take the context clues and find it themselves. So I went home with my freshly written keywords and searched the internet for hours hoping to find out where Dyer's Cove was. It kept me up far past bedtime and had me feeling hungover at work the next morning, but I had to visit. I built a pretty strong desire that night to make a trip of it and view the Perseid Meteor shower myself... in person. I set out to find the town and nearby motels or campgrounds even if it meant being alone for a weekend.
It had to have been the way the author wrote about it... how dark and calm Dyer Cove was and how on a lucky night... still, dark and cool, you could see up to two hundred meteors an hour. So I kept searching on google, mapquest -any site that I thought might lead me there. And I was PRAYING Dyer Cove wasn't too far.
I found it in Maine. In your town, or close by. Two hundred meteors per hour in one of the best spots to view this particular shower in the whole country, so I'm told. I think about the town I'm in... a pretty farming town wedged between two rapidly-growing cities where the lights grow even faster. Burning the pages of stories written long before the birth of those who hold the matches.
I don't talk to the girl anymore
she moved away
but there's a hand-drawn map in my notebook from my house to Dyer Cove
and I plan to use it someday.
A few years ago I had this infatuation with a silly girl... and she was obsessed with stars and the night sky. Now, at this point in my life I didn't really have a strong liking for star gazing... no more than the average fellow... but I had a strong liking for the girl and was intrigued by her passion for astronomy. For her birthday, I wanted to get her some books on the subject... something she might find interesting enough to enjoy. The last of about thirty books I picked off the shelf was called The Starry Room. -A collection of essays and short stories about the night sky and how best to view it. After reading just one story, I too fell in love with star gazing. (I even asked for and received a telescope for christmas later that year) Anyway, That night I stayed at Barnes and Noble until they closed just sitting quietly on the floor in the Astronomy section reading this book. Cover to cover. I took notes about it in my notebook that I carry around. There was one chapter that really grabbed me. I wrote A LOT in my notebook about it. Something about about a place the author referred to as Dyer Cove... and the August Perseid Meteor showers. The Perseid Meteor showers occur annually from about July until the end of August... with the peak viewing nights being from August 10-21st. The meteors pour out the Northeast sky from the belly of the constellation 'Perseus', but theyre just fragments of a comet called Swift-Tuttle. The writer urged me to visit but failed to give me any direction as to where it was. No state... not even a region. I found that the most exciting part though. I think the author wanted to share this gold mine with other enthusiasts but only with the ones that were serious enough to take the context clues and find it themselves. So I went home with my freshly written keywords and searched the internet for hours hoping to find out where Dyer's Cove was. It kept me up far past bedtime and had me feeling hungover at work the next morning, but I had to visit. I built a pretty strong desire that night to make a trip of it and view the Perseid Meteor shower myself... in person. I set out to find the town and nearby motels or campgrounds even if it meant being alone for a weekend.
It had to have been the way the author wrote about it... how dark and calm Dyer Cove was and how on a lucky night... still, dark and cool, you could see up to two hundred meteors an hour. So I kept searching on google, mapquest -any site that I thought might lead me there. And I was PRAYING Dyer Cove wasn't too far.
I found it in Maine. In your town, or close by. Two hundred meteors per hour in one of the best spots to view this particular shower in the whole country, so I'm told. I think about the town I'm in... a pretty farming town wedged between two rapidly-growing cities where the lights grow even faster. Burning the pages of stories written long before the birth of those who hold the matches.
I don't talk to the girl anymore
she moved away
but there's a hand-drawn map in my notebook from my house to Dyer Cove
and I plan to use it someday.