Manai'a Explorations
HC SVNT DRACONES

It is my favorite time of the year in Tucson - Monsoon season. I did a 12 mile run this morning in the desert behind my house, in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains. At 6AM, I was the only person on the trails and the sun was just above the horizon, illuminating the Tucson Mountains with that magical low angle warm light. As I trotted along in my minimalist sandals, the only sounds I could hear were my own footsteps and my breathing. About three and a half miles in, I came upon a good sized buck with 18" antlers all in velvet. He bounded away through the scrub as I continued running up the trail. In the moment, what struck me as remarkable was how silent was his bounding. All I could hear were my own footsteps and breathing, even as he effortlessly, gracefully, bounded through the brush. Usually when I flush a deer, I can hear their hooves thumping the ground, but this guy was so quiet, it gave a surreal quality to the experience, as though it wasn't real. The clou...

I find myself frequently searching for these quotations. A Reading from The Food Revolution by John Robbins Maybe we aren't on a one-way road to oblivion. Maybe we're standing at a crossroad, facing what may be the most important choice human beings have ever faced, a choice between two directions. In one direction is what we will have if we do nothing to alter our present course. By doing nothing, we are choosing a world of pollution and extinctions, of widening chasms and deepening despair, a world where humanity moves ever farther from achieving its highest aspirations and ever nearer to living its darkest fears. Our other choice is to actively engage with the living world. On this path we work responsibly and joyfully to make our lives, and our societies, into expressions of our love for ourselves, for each other, and for the living Earth. In this direction we honor our longing to give our children, and all children, a world with clean air and water, with blue sk...

Awesome. NGC6231 The Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula.

Yesterday was the summer solstice, but it is too bloody hot in Tucson to build a henge and run around naked, so to celebrate the spirit of Pagan astronomy, I took my astrophotography to the next level and purchased an autoguiding system and an autofocus system. I spent last evening in the parking lot of Starizona learning how to use my new equipment. In spite of the light pollution, poor polar alignment, inexperienced operator, etc., I took this image of the Lagoon Nebula :    This is a composite of five X 5 minute exposures, manipulated in Photoshop to extend the dynamic range of image. Not bad. The technology that is accessible to the average consumer today is remarkable.

I love astro-photography, but there are two aspects of astro-photography that prevent me from doing it all the time: cold and sleep-deprivation. The winter skies are full of spectacular subjects and winter nights are long and dark, but oh how I hate sitting still for hours in the cold. June is miserably hot in Tucson but the short nights are perfect for sitting in the backyard in a pair of shorts and sandals. Last night I recorded 21,000,000 year old photons that originated in the Pinwheel Galaxy , a faint galaxy that spins perpendicular to our view, in the middle of the image. My favorite aspect of this image is not the Pinwheel, but the other tiny galaxies, such as the one we see from the side in the upper left corner of the image, NGC5422, and the smudge in the lower right corner of the image, NGC 5474. In the wee hours of the morning, I turned my camera to the North America Nebula , appropriately named. This is a beautiful and exciting subject, ...

Years ago, I was visiting with an intelligent, successful young woman - I believe she was an attorney - at a social gathering at an Episcopal church. Some aspect of Christian theology came up, and embarrassed, she said something to the effect, “Well, of course it’s a metaphor.” “Of course.” I said, and we both laughed at her cliché apology for Christianity and the ridiculous predicament of intelligent people seeking community. I am reluctant to associate with Christianity, lest I be mistaken as a Southern Baptist. I grew up in redneck culture and to this day I judge people that speak with a southern drawl, are obese, or proclaim their love for  baby Jesus on Facebook. But there are good life lessons in the Christian myth when viewed from a Joseph Campbell/Carl Jung perspective and I lament that contemporary Christianity is so oblivious to these truths. The archetypal lessons of Easter - escape from bondage, death and resurrection - seems to me as cliché as “It’s a met...

Arjan flying at Box, sunset behind Baboquivari.

March 1 was the 16 th anniversary of the death of my friend Arjan. He was 40 years old when he died, and I was 31. I did CPR on him, a violent and exhausting ordeal, and there was blood and snot and saliva all over the place, so on the most fundamental level, his death was a traumatic experience for me. Arjan was my friend and we had a love-hate relationship. Whenever we would reflect each other’s light, we loved each other, and when we reflected each other’s shadow, we hated each other. We were kindred spirits in that we reflected each other’s light and shadow and we were both terrible narcissists, textbook examples of Jung’s puer aeternus , eternal flying boys too special for the boring earthly life of jobs and wives and mortgages, so on a deeper level, his death was traumatic in that I lost a soul brother. The deepest trauma of Arjan’s death, a trauma I struggle with even today, was the awareness of my unlived life that Arjan’s death brought into my consciousness. Soul Brother...