Chasing Geminids, Part 1

"The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky, seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness"

             ---The Heat of Darkness: Joseph Conrad

Chasing Geminids: The Art of the Go/No-Go

Life is in the doing.

I  consider Saturday night’s photography adventure a success. Not necessarily because the sky opened up and rained celestial fire upon my camera’s sensor, we will get to that later, but successful because I loaded the gear, turned the key, and went.

I found a spot in Rabbit Valley that had everything a man could need: complete darkness, a dramatic foreground of silence-weathered sandstone, and even a BLM pit toilet.

The toilet was locked for the season, of course. In a way, this was a mercy. With the temperature hovering near freezing, the plastic seat would have been a ring of jagged ice, precariously perched over a deep, dark pit of stewing human waste.

I always prepare in the days leading up to a remote shoot, so I never need a BLM pit. I time my personal consumption so the need will never come for a "plop." Sometimes those pits fill up to the point where a splash is possible. Think about that.

Down there, a subterranean cauldron of a billion bacteria was busy metabolizing the sins of past tourists, generating a faint and stifled heat. But the padlock was there, and the need was not. That biological reactor was safely sequestered from the crisp night air, and I was saved from the temptation of comfort.

The weather forecast was, to put it mildly, "optimistic" only if you enjoy looking at gray cotton. The predictions called for a transition from clear skies to 75% cloud cover right around the time the meteors were scheduled to arrive. A rational systems engineer would look at that data probability and stay home.

But I decided to take the challenge. The forecast is just a model. The sky is the reality.

The Vessel

I chose the 4Runner for this sortie, leaving the T100 in the stable. The 4Runner is the superior craft for navigating unknown planetary surfaces or rocky, muddy dirt roads, and it offers plenty of cargo space for my photography necessities. More importantly, it has heated seats.

The tortured roads I found were no longer muddy; they were frozen, tire-sized canyons where other travelers had misjudged the weather and abused the surface. The mud in places had calcified into ruts deep enough to swallow a wheel. The low channels intended for normal runoff had eroded into gullies, made passable only by the final accumulation of gravel deposited when the turbulence ended.

The BLM will be spending our tax dollars trying to repair the damage for next year's season. Lesson to all: watch the weather, and move out before the storm gods visit.

The temperature was predicted to stay above freezing, but anyone who has spent time in the high desert knows that "above freezing" is a technicality. When you are standing still, staring at the sky, waiting for a rock to burn up in the mesosphere, the cold moves in on you. It is a physical weight. It crawls up your body like a silent, white-streaked blue snake, then sits on your shoulders. It always lets you know it is there.

The Payload

I loaded my familiars about an hour before dark. These are my sensors, tuned to capture the spectral layers for the upcoming event.

• Optics: Tripods, cameras, lenses cleaned to invisibility.
• Comms: A full spectrum of radios including CB, GMRS, and HAM. With me to help me stay safe, and I like to listen to the chatter of the world while I leave it behind.
• Sound Gear: The field recorder. I brought it to capture the audio signature of the dark—the ability to hear what I saw.
• Survival: Layers of wool and down, water, snacks, and a sleeping bag rated for twenty below zero. Or at least, it was rated for that ten years ago. Now it might just be a very cozy bag for "chilly."

It is a habit born of experience. Always bring enough gear to survive the night you didn't plan to have.

Departure

I topped off the gas tank, another habit, and merged onto I-70 heading West. The interior of the 4Runner was a dense tetris of technology and survival gear, a mobile capsule designed to sustain life and capture light in a hostile environment.

The cockpit. Controlled chaos. Somewhere in there is a camera that can see the past, and a sleeping bag that remembers when it was rated for twenty below.

As I drove, the dashboard confirmed what my skin already knew. The numbers were dropping, and the desert was still exhaling last summer’s stored heat into the coming night.

The data point. It’s not cold yet, but the trend line is clear. The desert is exhaling.

Dusk was bruising the light and the horizon was flowing purple when I saw my exit. The goal was to leave the humming ribbon of interstate commerce behind and plunge into the silence.

The off-ramp. Leaving the light stream of civilization for the dark stream of Ra9bbit Valley.

My destination was Rabbit Valley, the gateway to the McInnis Canyon National Conservation Area. It is familiar ground. I have been there a hundred times to photograph the long shadows of the sun.


But I had never gone in for the stars. As I turned onto the dirt, the last light of the day was putting on a show that rivaled anything the meteors might offer later. The sky remained clear as the horizon rimmed in a final defiant gasp of color before the monochrome of night took over.

The preamble. The sun’s final, dramatic argument against the coming dark

I drove toward the interior, aiming to put the streaming light pollution behind me. I had a specific geologic feature in mind. It was a silent and weathered sentinel of sandstone that I hoped would anchor the composition.

The intended target. A silence-weathered spire waiting to be paired with celestial fire. But as any field geologist knows, the map is not the territory.


That, at least, was the plan.

The Oil Field Education

I spent over ten years in the Oil Patch. It was a previous life where I wasn't looking up at the stars, but down into the crust. I worked on exploration semi-submersible rigs and land rigs from Northern Vermont to Alabama.

I mention this not to polish my resume, but to explain why I pack the extra water, the food, and the radio. I have spent many winter nights sitting in the front seat of a Jeep or a Bronco in a blinding snowstorm, waiting for a drilling rig to chew its way through another ten feet of rock.

Sure, I was with the crew at the well site, but the transit, moving to the next rig I was supervising, was a solo affair. It meant miles of solitude, driving over board roads and icy backcountry mud to remote locations. There, I would sit and wait for the "cuttings sample" to arrive at the surface so I could peer at it through a microscope and log the geology, always marking the well's progression as it ate its way deep into time.

I have "sat on" wells that were 4,000 feet deep and wells that went to 27,000 feet. Each one with ten foot narratives describing the details of the recovered drill bits rock fragments. There is a specific kind of solitude and awareness when you are that deep in the wilderness, or the ocean, waiting for the earth to reveal a secret. You develop habits. You learn that the cold is patient. You learn that if you are alone, you can take risks because you trust your own grit to get you to morning. But if you have a passenger, someone who hasn't experienced the long and worrisome night, you keep that risk close to zero.

Navigating the dark

.

Tonight it was just me. So the risk of being tens of miles from any hardtop road was acceptable. I was prepared to wait for a sunrise if needed, but I was waiting for the rocks of Gemini to fall.



(To be continued...)
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