Curiosity Creates Opportunity
on the willingness to try
Aloha, I’m Ashley. I write about life through the lens of love for creative souls who seek to make life more beautiful. If you find value in the magical and inspiration in the messy middle, subscribe to join the journey. Your footprints will be celebrated.
A meteor shower isn’t that great in the rain, but that didn’t stop us from trying.
Every Tuesday night is date night. This particular Tuesday, it’s my turn to plan, and I invited N to watch the Eta Aquarid meteor shower.
Except it’s raining.
Our plan was to find a spot on Saddle Road: a road that is, as it declares, a pass through the saddles of three mountains. Our house sits at 2200’ above sea level, and it’s pouring, but the pass is easily 5000’, and you’ll often punch through the clouds there.
So we try.
I mean, why not? Staying at home sounds cozy, but a drive to watch a meteor shower sounds like an adventure.
As we drive north, the forecast, as seen through the overworked windshield wipers, is not good. Except for a little glowing patch to the far north, the entire island is socked in.
We discuss turning around or heading to the beach, but we’re dressed for winter, and it doesn’t look dry down there either.
So we continue.
We begin the climb up Saddle Road. While we are getting closer to the clouds, we’re still surrounded. There’s a road ahead where we could loop around, morphing this meteor shower date into a mini road trip — one where no gas station snack stands were accosted, and we saw nothing new. But as we near it, the rain turns to mist. Maybe there’s a chance it’ll clear.
So we continue.
And just like that, we ascend the clouds. The sky is a perfect high-altitude blue, and the clouds are moving at racing speed. It’s clear enough to see the stars in this pocket (if it were dark), but we’re an hour away from sunset, the weather at this elevation is unpredictable, and the cloud bank isn’t far off. There’s a good chance we’ll be back in the clouds before too long.
So we continue.
We leave the one clear patch of sky we’ve seen and drive towards another cloud bank and a different road that will take us up the side of the mountain. It’s a gamble.
But we’re not flying entirely blind. We’d already called the Mauna Kea access road information line. The road to the summit is closed — wind advisory, fog, icy roads, perhaps not ideal conditions — but we could try the visitor’s center. At 9000’, it’s almost always clear enough to see a star or two. So we call them, which I had no idea you could do.
“Oh, hi,” I say, fully expecting a recording. “We’re just wondering if you’re socked in up there?”
“Hi! Clouds are pretty high but spotty. It’s worth trying,” the phone answerer says.
“Great, thanks!”
As we approach the Mauna Kea access road, the rain has let up, but the sky is still full clouds. At this point, we’re committed. What’s another 4000’ climb?
Several yards down the turn-off, a small Asian woman stands by her jeep with her thumb stuck out while her mother (I assume) is futzing around in the driver’s seat with the door ajar. I don’t think they need a ride, but they might need help so I slow and roll down the window, “Are you okay?” I ask.
She’s a little frantic and wants to know how to put the Jeep into 4-wheel drive. They won’t need it; the summit road is closed after all, but I’d rather be helpful than dismissive, so we pull over, and I hop in the driver’s seat of her Jeep. N hovers outside the door. Jeeps are not made for the very tall.
We figure it out, run through the order of ops several times, and caution her not to use 4-wheel drive on the pavement.
“I am very much appreciate,” she says with a little bow.
“Happy we could help, enjoy!”
As we load into my truck, the car in front of us deposits a hitchhiker we’d seen at the entrance to Saddle, some very many miles away.
I raise my eyebrows at N. Yeah, sure, he says without a word.
I roll my window down. “Where are you going?” I ask the young man.
“Sunset!” he says, with the kind of hopeful confidence that comes with the young and gestures to the sky. Cute.
“Hop in the back,” I offer, and add, “We’re only going to the visitor’s center.”
“That’s fine!”
He bounces like a golden retriever puppy and does a running leap into the back of the truck — this is not hyperbole. It’s 51 degrees, but he has a plastered smile and a face full of wonder for the entire ascent.
“We probably don’t need to tell him that, even if the summit road is open, he’s not making it up there for sunset, right?” I ask Noah. The summit is another 4000’ above the visitor’s center, and the sunset clock is ticking.
“Nah,” he says. “I don’t think he cares.”
I nod.
We’re still in the clouds, but when we arrive at the visitor’s center…nope, they’re still there. But they’re moving, and quickly. The weather is even more mutable up here, and, like the phone guy said, they’re sparse.
We arrived before dark to Aiden’s (that’s our hitchhiker) utter delight. Noah was right, he doesn’t care that the summit road is closed. We say our goodbyes, grab a parking spot and set up our meal on an obliging picnic table. N and I are wearing many layers. I’m wrapped in a quilt like a colorful burrito and still freezing. Mauna Kea is breathtakingly beautiful, and it is breath taking; the altitude has never been my friend. But my lack of oxygen and frozen fingers are quickly forgotten.
Silhouettes of people march along the graceful curves of cinder cones in search of a perfect spot to watch the day’s descent. The landscape is red cinder, tawny grasses, and sorbet sky.
The clouds are gilded and gliding so close that they sometimes touch our feet. Just before dark, they’re gone, and we are treated to the new moon night sky in its starriest splendor. The Milky Way is a long crescent to the west. To the east, there is more ink in the starscape.
Even though we’re reclined on the picnic table, eyes shaded with blankets, people keep turning their LED headlights on and off, temporarily blinding us, and a surprising number of car alarms sound. Every time we whisper to each other, Wrong button, and wait for the poor souls to find the right one. The disturbances barely detract from the splendor.
When I re-read the blurb on my astro-calendar, it says that the best time to view the meteor shower is just before dawn, at around 4 am, as it rises in the east. Oh. Oops. No meteors, then.
We each see one shooting star, many, many scooting stars (satellites), and the oddest display of nighttime flying I’ve ever witnessed — a line of at least fifty equally spaced planes glide high above us like a taut string of twinkle lights. Military, obviously, but wow, what a trip.
Eventually, we leave the parking lot and the obliging picnic table for an empty patch of dirt down the way and finish our stargazing in the back of the truck, blindly stabbing at slices of carrot cake because we both forgot headlamps.
I love feeling so small, just a prick of light in the landscape of infinity. I love how time moves differently for humans than for rocks, or stars, or volcanoes. Imagine what it’s like to be a dainty mayfly, an infinitesimal flash of lifespan, in the scheme of things, anyway.
I marvel at the wonder of living at all. It is never more tangible than when you’re sat under the bowl of a dark sky watching worlds that have come and gone on an unfathomable timeline that is, and will always be, right now.
I loved it all.. time to make a trip there