Flirting with the Northern Lights

Galina with Orion, Taurus, Sirius, Betelguise, and other countless friends.

It was a  rare moment in terms of the calendar year. Typically I don’t visit the quiet and secluded Polecat Bench until the school year is over in mid-May, but the prospect of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) making an appearance this far south was too much to resist. Further, night forecast was shaping up to be mostly clear skies with few clouds.

Sure, I’ve taken a few images of the night sky from the darkness of The Bench, but never with the Northern Lights on the stage.

So, I told my former student, Galina, about it (who doesn’t have a car, and therefore doesn’t get to travel beyond our small town very often), and she was all in.

We loaded up our camera equipment around sundown and made our way to the Bench and arrived as the darkness was taking over, but with plenty of light on the horizon. I parked the truck facing north and we waited.

We lingered outside of the truck at first, and watched the overhead satellites go by along with the growing number of stars as the darkness enveloped our world. Then we retreated to the truck when the cold started to overcome us. Inside the truck, I fired up the engine to heat up the interior and then turn it off.

This little cycle happened at least two times before Galina spotted a glow that seemed a little out of place on the north-by-northwest horizon. We stepped out of the truck and set up our equipment.

It wasn’t long before we had recorded our first long exposure that revealed the barely noticeable Northern Lights—but certainly more revealing on the camera’s sensor.

Nonetheless, as fast as the anomaly made its appearance it was gone—gone for the the next 90 minutes or so as we waited for another showing before calling it a night and departing for town.

The next day I read about how last night’s Lights would be the last day of their appearance, and how the experts had predicted they would peak sometime after midnight—well past our outing.

Maybe I’ll be prepared to stay longer the next time they come around.

Gary Deckard

Gary Deckard visiting the Work tomb at the Glendale
Cemetery in Downtown Akron, Ohio.

I first met Gary around my senior year in high school. We had attended the same high school, but I never knew him from school because he was three years ahead of me. I met him through my best friend, Steve. Gary and Steve were both summer hired help at the General Tire chemical plant in nearby Mogadore, Ohio.

Gary and Steve became pretty good friends that summer and as a result, Gary and I became acquainted. I think we hit it off pretty well because we were from the same high school unlike the others in that circle of friends back then.

I didn’t get to know Gary that well until later on when I was in college. He gave the seminary a try back then and about the same time, I became a Catholic, but neither one of us knew of the others adventures in Catholicism until later on. Like our common high school, our common faith brought us closer together too.

When I returned to Ohio during school breaks or holidays, we would always spend some time together. He even visited me while I was in graduate school at Northern Arizona.

We spent more time together when I was waylaid in Ohio for almost two years after graduate school. So much, that Gary asked me to be his best man when he married.

I know Gary’s childhood and adolescent were rough. I never knew the details but I’m pretty sure it had to do with sexual abuse from his father and some of the older neighborhood kids where he grew up. I feel pretty sure in saying that he carried all of that throughout his entire life. To say he was a tormented soul would not be an exaggeration.

After moving to Wyoming, my visits with Gary became fewer. We didn’t lose complete touch with each other, but I know he became stranger to me as a result of his body-building interest and the fact that he was married and had a child. During all those times, I know he struggled with drug/alcohol abuse and his sexual orientation. He never shared much of the details, but enough to make me aware—always telling me about this darkness with his trademark nervous laughter.

Gary and I: probably at Akron Metropolitan
Gorge Park around the late 1980s.

And so on February 16, 2022—at the age of 65—Gary took his own life while living in Clinton, Iowa. In my fairly long life, I don’t think there has been anyone I’ve known that well who took their own life. Naturally I’ve been questioning my friendship with Gary and asking myself if I could have done better—could I have made a difference resulting in a different outcome?

Amongst our little circle of friends, Gary was known for his collection of beer steins and nutcrackers. Sometimes he would show up at a party or gathering of our friends with his guitar to sing and play upon request, but he never required that attention. He also had an infectious laugh and a killer impression of the Tasmanian Devil in the Looney Tunes cartoons.

I never witnessed Gary during those darker moments that I knew about—when he was struggling with one of his internal demons. I only witnessed the jovial friend who was happy to join in with any of his friends no matter what it entailed. I never heard him complain. I’m pretty sure he loved us all.



A Winter Outing

Just before the spring semester of 2022 started, I was invited to join a bunch of “old retired guys” for a three-day winter outing in the Big Horn Mountains—staying at the U.S. Forest Service Muddy Guard cabin.

There weren’t too many surprises beyond the great weather we experienced (warm and sunny during the days). Each of us did a respectable amount of Nordic skiing and/or snow-shoeing during the daylight hours. Everyone cooked at least one meal for the other four cabinmates.

Andy Rose contemplates skiing off into the wilderness and leaving his old friends behind.

Harvested young lodgepole pines make for their beginnings of a sweat lodge… just ad blankets or hides.

_{Images from our trip to the Big Horn Mountains at the Muddy Guard cabin.}

In the evenings, Poker was the game and if anyone didn’t get enough, there was usually a game of Spades after that before everyone retired.

The sleeping quarters were two rooms. One room had two bunk beds (four people) and the other room at a full-size bed (where one person in our group slept—and that wasn’t me).

One of the non-surprises for me was that I wouldn’t sleep well. It didn’t take much imagination to realize that sleeping in the same room with three retired guys would not be peaceful given the snoring and multiple pee trips to the outhouse in the middle of the night.

Nevertheless, it was a good trip and a relaxing—albeit not restful—time.

The Muddy Guard cabin can be rented via the U.S. Forest Service web page here.