Mosquitos and Meteors.
“Mom, how about next Saturday night, we drive an hour down US 41 to the darkest, most remote place we can find in a swampland, turn off the car, lay down on the ground in the pitch black night and see what happens?”
That was an invitation from my soon to be 21 year old daughter back in 2021 while she was home for Winter Break.
I responded with a resounding, “Heck YES!”
Like me, my daughter is a die-hard star-gazer, starting from her early days of sitting on my lap staring up at the California night sky singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Starlight, Starbright,” in sweet counterpoint with me. (She is also a talented singer!).
So I knew she was referring to heading out to the closest designated “International Dark Sky Place,” located in Big Cypress National Park, to watch the The Geminid Meteor Shower that was to peak that coming weekend in the beginning of December.
Never one to turn down an invitation from my daughter, we packed her car with a blanket, wrapped ourselves up in warm clothing, and sang along to Christmas music as we excitedly took the hour long drive to the Dark Spot.
I don’t know if you are familiar with this particular stretch of road also known as The East Trail, but at a certain point, it becomes a narrow two lane road with a speed limit of 60 mph.
Even with daylight, this kind of road would make me nervous, but here we were, nine o’clock in the evening, my daughter at the wheel, and aside from our headlights, it was pitch black.
My daughter actually is a great driver, but my Protector part was not having it.
“Oh my gosh, is she paying enough attention to the road?”
“The windshield is dirty, and her wipers need to be replaced; can she see well enough?”
“What if a deer/panther/alligator jumps in front of the car?”
“We’re going so fast, we’re going to swerve right into the reptile infested swamp as we go around that curve!”
I kept breathing and letting go, breathing and letting go, and actually did pretty well resisting my Protector’s attempts to control the situation by telling my daughter how she should be driving, in order to relieve my anxiety.
Eventually, we made the right turn into the Park’s entrance. Fortuitously, the Meteor Shower was to occur at the same time of the New Moon, which meant it was really, really, really dark.
We parked, turned off the car, and stepped out into blackness.
Both of us being adventurous, and having a tendency to believe our reality is a relatively safe place, we weren’t afraid at all; rather we couldn’t wait for our eyes to adjust to the lack of light so we could take in the magnitude of the universe above our heads.
It didn’t take long.
As I write this now, chills rush through me remembering how vast the night sky seemed, and how connected I felt to it all despite how minuscule I knew I was in comparison.
The second our eyes came into focus, we saw our first meteor! We both gasped excitedly, and quickly lay the blanket on the ground and settled ourselves down upon it.
Another gasp as we simultaneously recognized the telltale hazy band of star-stuff we call the Milky Way wafting across the canvas of the sky. This galaxy includes us and our Solar System and approximately 100-400 billion other stars and planets, and is estimated to span to a visible diameter of almost 2 million light years!!!
Mind. Blown.
I had to keep pinching myself to remember that I was not sitting in a planetarium, but actually in a location almost right in my back yard.
And then as if this deliciousness was not enough, we were gifted with another meteor right below the belt of the constellation of Orion.
And then another, and another, and another.
We started counting and got to about 20 meteors before we became acutely aware that the little itches we were silently each feeling around our exposed faces, were actually mosquitoes.
Did I mention that we were in a swamp?
Did you know that mosquitoes don’t care that it is winter when they live in Florida?
Oh. And by the way, I am a Mosquito Magnet.
Again, I breathed and let go, breathed and let go…and that got me up to about 30 shooting star sightings before mentioning my discomfort again to my daughter.
We took the sleeping bag from the back of her car, unzipped it and wrapped it around both of us.
Some relief.
While she was annoyed by the buggers, fortunately for my daughter, they weren’t biting her few exposed body parts like they were her mom’s.
Yep, my head, eyelids, forehead, ears…wherever they could sense my mosquito-attracting blood.
I didn’t want to miss any part of the glorious show Nature was performing, so I continued to breathe and observe myself responding to the little stings on my scalp and my eyelids.
At about 37 meteor sightings, I had very consciously decided that my discomfort in getting bitten was overriding the joy I could still experience, and let my daughter know that at meteor 40, I was going to get in the car and watch from there. She agreed to join me.
Once in the protected space of the interior of her car, despite the limited view we had through the windshield, we observed 10 more blazing streaks to reach our goal of 50 sightings before we decided to head home.
We were both awestruck and buzzing with the high energy of the light show we just witnessed.
I braced myself for the drive home, deciding then and there that I would not let my fears take away from the quality of the experience I just had with my wonderful daughter. I let her do the driving…not my Protector!
Firmly in my Wise Adult Self.
Breathing, letting go; breathing, letting go; breathing, letting go…
Of course we made it home safely, and I lived to share this story with you.
What occurs to me is that all of life is like this: one amazing experience sandwiched between other frightful experiences which are sandwiched between other amazing experiences. And on and on and on.
We mostly can’t control either one of these experiences; when they come, how long they will last, or how intense they will be.
However, we can control how we will respond to them.
So, ask yourself a couple of questions. Can you align yourself with your Wise Adult and:
discern between real danger and perceived threat?
create more space to sit with your discomfort?
breathe your way through it, knowing it won’t last forever.
have the presence of mind to accept what is, so you can choose how to respond rather than react?
If you want a sure-fire way to develop your ability to do all of this, click here.
I can show you how building these muscles can give you the ability to truly be present to each moment, and to appreciate anything that life offers.
Much love,
Carol
