Moon and planets align over Appalachia
I have a dear friend, a man born and raised in one of Appalachia’s southernmost fringes, Sawyerville, Ala., who telephones me regularly to keep fresh our 30-year association. The fact that his long distance calls always occur between 4-5 a.m. does not diminish our mutual pleasure in talking about family matters, careers, football, and hunting.We share a somewhat unusual hobby, in addition.
Recently, the portable phone rang at the unholy hour of 3:30 in the morning. I lurched awake from a deep sleep, staggered into the kitchen to fumble for the receiver in a stack of newspapers, magazines, and mail, and hesitantly said, “Hello?” I feared bad news about one of my parents.
“Hey, ol’ buddy! You see the moon right now?”
It was Billy May, and he was excited about an astronomical event: the near vertical alignment of the moon and several planets. It occurs so rarely that neither of us will witness the celestial phenomenon again in our lifetimes. In fact, the next similar event will be 47 years in the future. I would have slept right through it if he hadn’t called.
“It’s overcast and showery here,” he complained. “Tell me what it looks like!”
He was sitting on the deck of his father’s farm house, in Kimbro Bottoms, near Eutaw on the Black Warrior River. Appalachia doesn’t extend much further into Dixie than this. I heard him sip coffee. “C’mon, Yankee! Go outside and see…”
I am not a Yankee, but the telephone line connected opposite poles of Appalachia due to life changes. The skies were clear at my 40-acre farm north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Sure enough, the quarter moon was rising on the southeastern horizon. It shone with the added decorations of Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter sparkling straight above in a line varying by a scant one degree.
“Ahhhhhh,” my friend sighed as I described the beauty of four heavenly bodies aligned ruler straight.
“Reckon how many folks would be up at this time of the morning just to glimpse the juxtaposition of the moon and planets?” he wondered.
This is a passion – amateur astronomy – that we’ve mutually cultivated for many years. We eschew powerful telescopes or optical devices. Seeing the magnificence of God’s universe with the naked eyes is pleasure enough.
The fact that the heavenly viewing occurred about 10 days before Christmas made it even more special. We agreed that this was probably the view the Wise Men and shepherds had when the Lord’s birth was announced. It was still good enough for us and billions of other residents of this planet, 2006 years later.
I sat on the porch stoop and gazed in wonder at the celestial array. I shivered in my sweat pants and University of Tennessee pajama top, but it was worth rubbing the sleep from one’s eyes for on a frosty morning.
Sitting there, I tried to remember a child’s book my wife and I had read our oldest son 20 years ago. Something about the moon, the story went. It had to do with a little boy who didn’t understand why the moon disappeared some nights, why it didn’t shine full through his bedroom window every evening before it went to sleep.
He asked neighbors and shop owners: “I am looking for my moon. Have you seen him?” They tell him that he faces a long journey to find the moon, but each gives him a gift: a moon cookie from the baker, a toy horse from the antique store, a moon-round watch from the clock maker, but finally a Chinese laundry man tells the child that “no one has the moon always – just once in a while.”
That night, when he goes to bed, the moon shines through his window again and reflects through the bars of a bird cage he has hung in front of a mirror in an attempt to capture the light. But, he knows now that the moon is his to enjoy only a few days every month.
For my friend, Billy May, and I, the vertical conjunction of the moon and the three planets will not occur again until after we are only memories, like the light shining through the little boy’s window and reflecting in the mirror. No one has the moon always. But it is the same moon and planets that cast silver light on the Christ child, the same that illuminated the way for the Wise Men and shepherds.
It was worth being awakened to witness, and I am glad my friend called.
