JIM CONRAD'S NATURALIST NEWSLETTER Issued from the Sierra Nevada Foothills east of Sacramento, California July 24, 2005 ***** DUSK ATOP SLATE MOUNTAIN Last Sunday at dusk once again I lay myself atop a flat outcrop of slate on Slate Mountain's bald ridge and watched the stars appear one by one. There were two evening stars, Venus nearest the Sun, then Jupiter, and then came the Moon maybe 75% full, and all those objects were almost evenly spaced in a broad arc across the sky, from Sun to Moon. My computer's sky program says that Saturn also was there, but it was so near the sun I couldn't see it. All around me hundreds of dragonflies of different species darted about apparently catching things too small for me to see. Mosquitoes were bad, so maybe the dragonflies were eating mosquitoes. Still, on this windswept, bare peak far from any water, these were among the insects I'd have least expected -- except that I'd seen the same thing the last time I slept there. The three bird species in that harsh habitat -- all making their appearances only briefly at dawn and dusk -- were the Rock Wren, Spotted Towhee and California Quail. Hiding in the dense manzanita thicket framing the bald area they made the most tentative of calls -- just a token word to let the world know they were there, but nothing to really call attention to themselves. For, something in that utterly fractured, desolate-feeling, slate-rubble ridge made us all keep our voices low. That night lying atop the slate, it happened that my body lay parallel with the ecliptic -- the path the sun, moon and planets take as they cross the sky. The Moon was rising so as I lay with my feet pointing eastward it seemed the Moon rose from between my legs, then during the night mounted to above my chest and face and, finally, as dawn approached, in my half- sleep, entered the mystical eye in my forehead's center, the eye some religions and sects say we all have, that lets us see, as in dreams, what our other two eyes can't.
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