|
|
|
|
Corona
Thu Mar 20, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
“As usual, this winter the elk have been down in the Animas River Valley.”
Weather Notebook commentator Becky Rumsey.
“On moonlit nights you can glimpse them, patiently waiting to cross the road or suddenly
lifting their heads from an evening meal of apple branches or brown meadow grass. If the moon
is bright enough, you can see bits of shrubbery dangling from their mouths. The other night
there were rings around the moon. It was nearly full and the glowing circles were gold and
magenta. I've learned recently that there's a name for this. It's called a corona. And it's
common in the mountains in the winter. It happens when water droplets diffract light rays as
they pass through thin clouds. The smaller the drops, the larger the rings. A long time ago,
before anyone had walked on the moon, there was a legend that it was a treasure house of all
that was lost or wasted on earth. There, on the moon, all our misspent time, broken promises,
unanswered prayers. Think of it: the moon with craters of good intentions, mountains of
wasted talents, and seas of fruitless tears. Now that we know better, we have no place to go
to retrieve these things. But wouldn't it be great if an occasional moonbath were all we
needed to soak up some of what we've lost? Looking at the moon the other night, I tried
tracing the path of one lost ray. From the shine on a piece of dry grass in an elk's mouth,
to a wisp of cloud, through a prism of water, all the way to the surface of the moon and then,
clear out to the sun.”
Becky Rumsey comes to us from her home in Durango, Colorado. Our show is funded by the
National Science Foundation with underwriting provided by Subaru.
|
|
