I went to bed too early, changing some of the clocks to prepare to fall back out of Daylight Savings Time.

I knew the result of the Big Game, and one of my sons will be very happy. Out of deference to the tyranny of time zones, I will not comment further.

Being a man of a certain age, I woke a couple times in the night, the usual.

Concluding necessary business, I decided I was up anyway, I grabbed an airline mini-bottle of Chivas Regal, one of the dozens that Devon the Hindu Flight Attendant had given me after an ultimatum from his lovely wife about getting that awful alcohol out of their unit above mine.

Then I unlocked the back door and walked out on the back deck to look at the night sky. I took a sip from the little bottle and craned my head up and was mesmerized.

There is not much light pollution out here in the shadow of the mountain, and the dusty trail of the Milky Way with the stars bright and distinct. The planets and the nearer stars blazed white-hot. I soaked it all in, their astonishing diamond perfection hypnotic.

(The Pleiades: the sisters Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. This last lady was the youngest, and was said to be wooed by Orion. In other myths, she married Sisyphus; becoming mortal in so doing, faded away after giving him several sons.)

The group of stars that form the Pleiades constellation was intricate and jewel-like over the pine trees. The clarity was both stark and rich. It was so cool and so hot: simultaneously intimate and so unimaginably far away.

The old ones called them the Seven Sisters, though a geek would tell you there are also known as Messier Object M45, and composed of middle-aged B-Type stars. The Chivas inclined me to go with the Greeks. They thought that after Atlas was forced to carry the heavens on his shoulders, Orion the Hunter began to pursue the Sisters, and mighty Zeus transformed them first into doves, and then into stars to comfort their father. The Constellation of Orion is said to still pursue them across the night sky.

(Orion, My Man.)

Orion is special to me- he was the first star-object I was able to identify as a kid- and I still say a secular prayer to him when I catch sight of belt of stars that girds his mighty torso and club above: “Orion. My Man.”

I breathed those words in the chill November darkness. The poet Hesiod wrote about them in one of the fragments of verse that have come down across the milenia. They are primarily observable at the end of the harvest, in and thus feature prominently in the ancient agricultural calendar as the time to plough and sow seed:

“And if longing seizes you for sailing the stormy seas,
when the Pleiades flee mighty Orion
and plunge into the misty deep
and all the gusty winds are raging,
then do not keep your ship on the wine-dark sea
but, as I bid you, remember to work the land.”
– (Hesiod, Works and Days 618-23)

The Pleiades would flee mighty Orion this night, too, and plunge into the West just before dawn in this part of November. I chose not to watch them go, and said goodnight to the Sisters and to The Hunter, and finished the little bottle of Chivas. I thought this was not much like the city, with the roar of Route 50 as constant as the pounding surf and the flood of streetlights blanking out the majesty of the universe.

Then I went back inside, locking the back door behind me, and slid under the goosefeathers. I might have tossed twice, I don’t know. The rich darkness was as good as the comforter.

Later, when the extra-long night was coming to an end and I could no longer stay under the eiderdown, I swung my legs out of the comfy pillow-top bed and stood up.

The stars were gone. I looked out over the growing light on the pastures and saw that the office door on the garage was open again.

A matter for investigation. Crap- I was pretty sure I extra locked it last weekend. Intruders? Was someone or something living in there?

I took a semi-automatic pistol out of a drawer and then slid in a full clip, seating it with a rap of my palm and hearing a satisfying click. Then I picked up the stouter of my walking canes and shrugged on a zippered hoodie.

Then I marched off to meet the morning, and the unknown, down on the farm.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303