Day 3 in Phoenix: Clear Skies in Hell

Last night I was at one of our properties with a throng of colleagues, enjoying the evening after a weird buffet dinner where the only edible thing was the chipotle polenta.

Although I tend to post day-by-day musings when I travel, I didn't post the first two days because I've been lazy and ambivalent about writing, and because there's been little to say out here in Arizona. The only interesting comment I could come up with was that I noticed, whilst awaiting my connection to Phoenix, there was an unusual amount of female sailors strolling about at O'Hare. I couldn't quite make out what that was about, but it was the first time I was ever aware of female sailors. If I had had more time during my layover, I would have put my journalist cap on, and started conducting investigative interviews.

So anyway...I was at this shindig in the desert at a resort that has a dude-ranch thing going on, and there was this one guy in the corner lording over a really expensive telescope. When I saw the telescope, I looked up into the sky, and realized, for the first time since I landed here a few days ago, that the skies are completely clear, and there is little ambient light. Well, at least, out there, in the middle of nowhere, there was little. Not quite like being in, say, Bariloche, but it was pretty ideal for stargazing, especially for a city girl like me that can barely see Venus on most nights.

I was suddenly overcome by a sense of relief -- I was finally going to have an interesting moment, where I could escape from the reality of being on yet another business trip with a bunch of people who are great and fun but we'd all really just rather be somewhere elsewhere the temperature was not 112 degrees. We were DYING. Plus, some of our colleagues decided to have the ranch saddle them up on horses and parade through our throng. The horses promptly shat, copiously, in the middle of our gathering. The stench was unbearable. I wanted to wander out into the cacti-laden badlands, hoping a scorpion, or whatever poisonous vermin is common out here in the Southwest, would offer to relieve me of my misery.

But then I approached the telescope. It was pointed at Saturn.

There it was! The rings and everything! I leaned over into the apparatus, stared, and blinked. It didn't seem real. It looked like, I dunno, a slide I'd see in one of those thingees, when I was little? What was it called...a Viewmaster?

I looked at Saturn. And then we pointed the 'scope across the sky. I saw Jupiter, and four of its moons. And then I gazed at our moon, the Moon. It's so close, compared to the others. I was able to study the details of it, like observing the lines in someone's face.

Geez. Wow.

I cannot describe what I saw or felt, but I must plan a trip to an observatory, immediately.

I'm so glad I came out here.