Under A Water-Rust Moon

Total lunar eclipse tonight, last one in this area until 2007. It started while I was in Tai Chi class, but was near totality by the time I got out, hanging overhead as I drove across Lake Washington on I-90. Each lunar eclipse is different - I've seen ones which the moon was nearly wiped out against the night sky and those which were blood-red. Tonight it was the color of old mining equipment, and reminded me of Tonto National Forest in Arizona.

I pulled out the scope Kate got me for Christmas and stood in the backyard, my breath steaming in the cold, fiddling with levels and focii until I could get it right. It looked like the bottom of a steel pan, left out in the rain for a summer or two. It was a future moon, the one that was left after we had pulled everything out that we wanted and left it there, hanging in the sky, as a dim reminder of its former glory.

More later,