I said hi to a hunter in the sky: A constellation meditation

Last week, late one night, Orion rolled up over the side of the horizon.

I hadn’t seen the rough old bastard in a while. I never see him in the summer. So I said hey, what’s up. I don’t care for the winter, but it’s good to see you again. Everybody knows it’s time for summer to end. Who am I to argue?

You didn’t miss much, although I guess plenty of stuff happened. I’ll tell you something that made me mad – this ridiculous “Supermoon” nonsense happened in August and everybody thought it was cool, not realizing that it completely wrecked the Perseid meteor shower. In no way is that a fair tradeoff.

But what are you gonna do, man? These things happen. Worse things happen. Besides that, though, I guess I don’t have too much to complain about. Not tonight, anyway.

He doesn’t say much, he just hunts and hunts and hunts, hunts whatever the hell a club-wielding ancient sportsman in the sky is actually trying to kill, cook, and eat. Or at least kill, if he’s that kind of hunter. If that sounds distasteful, well, who are we to judge a constellation?

Silly and trivial, well, all of it may seem so, especially in the face of much of what we so often ponder and discuss. But whatever happens, we only get so many Septembers while we’re here, and even if the imaginary star-picture I’m talking to isn’t actually stalking space-prey throughout the ages, night on night, he does mark the changing of the seasons. He brings with him apples and their cider, the dimmer light but crisper air, all the bounty of the harvest, such as it may be.

And not “may we” but we must grant ourselves permission to take our pleasure, even as history itself may soon run dry, in the simple things that are halfway cool – otherwise we may as well check out early. We’ve only so many chances to hang out with this guy Orion, so let’s not bail on it, and let’s make sure not to bail on the awareness that it’s at least kinda good to be here in the universe.