I've been entranced. I hadn't looked at so many stars in decades. And never have I ever been in an astronomy class. Until visiting the Grand Canyon this Thanksgiving (2025).
Thank you to the National Park Service for bringing Dr. Daniel Fleisch and his laser pointer to one of the darkest skies in the U.S.!
The darkness made finding the shuttle bus a little scary. Fortunately I brought my beat-up old headlamp and the driver spotted us and picked us up. (Better to be on a lit bus with strangers than out in the wilderness alone. Well, if you're a woman or child. Y'all know my fondness for the well-traveled wilderness.)
Amazing night. I felt like I was at the beach and the ocean would be beyond the trees. But it was the eastern edge of the Canyon's South Rim and a parking lot. Dr. Fleisch brought a few telescopes, a projection screen and his super-duper laser pointer. Who knew that it would reach to the visibility of the stars above. We all oohed and aahed. About a hundred of us.
Orion had been the constellation I would always see. But now I've been reminded of the Greek mythology I learned in childhood, like Perseus and his Pegasus, Andromeda, and Cetus the whale. We learned that the Subaru logo is another group of stars - the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters. Dr. Fleisch told us we could see "the Subaru." My daughter and I looked up at the stars, but she later confessed that she didn't see an image of a car. Then we looked at the logo on our Crosstrek and it all made sense to her.
I had researched availability of the "Constellations over the Canyon" program in the weeks before our trip, but due to the government shut-down (the longest one in our country's history thus far), an event was not listed on our travel dates.
So what an awesome surprise when we saw that the astronomer would indeed be hosting this stargazing event on the ONE night we would be in Grand Canyon Village. I asked a friendly red-haired fellow working at the lodge about the program and he suggested we attend, as he himself went once and he said he would never forget it.
Well that is exactly my sentiment. I will never forget our night of stargazing in the Grand Canyon with an astronomer as our guide. Dr. Fleisch was funny, fascinating and inspiring.
He reminded me how big the world is and how long history is.
He also triggered the idea that everything we send to the cloud could be transmitted to other lifeforms on other planets in some of the other TRILLION galaxies.
This made me wonder: is this a reason for testimony that we humans on Earth generate, with each letter we write or document we transmit?
Will it take the number of light years Dr. Fleisch mentioned to reach their intergalactic destinations?
And will we be remembered?