Harold Meckler

Throughout April, and well before typical bedtimes, the beautiful and awe-inspiring constellations Orion, Gemini, Ursa Major, Taurus and Leo can all be seen from our Southern Arizona backyards sitting below the majestic sky islands.

Perhaps, now more than ever, it is crucial to understand the viewer just as much as what is being viewed.

Every time I find Andromeda I let go a muffled shout and I think of John Muir trying to grasp the enormity of what is now Yosemite National Park. I am seeing so far into the past I can barely comprehend the view.

Finding endless clues that life on Earth and events far off in space mimic each other has helped to sustain me. Things—both happy and sad—have fit snugly into a pattern. Until now. 

It’s illuminating how a simple, direct question—especially from a grandchild—can reorient one’s perspective.

‘Fast radio bursts,’ like the one detected this past March, allow our imagination to roam freely, eventually coming to a place where we understand that the impossible is, indeed, very possible.

Rivers once flowed there. There were oceans as well. What made it all disappear? If it happened to our neighbor, might it happen here?