Steven Carter

Star Trek

. . . Join me in a toast to the beauty of starlight?

This wouldn’t have been a rhetorical question for the Pueblo Indians. After a point in a rainless season, they weren’t interested in quenching parched esthetic sensibilities. Physical thirst and what would happen if the rains never came—that’s what concerned them.

The rains did show up, but too late.

When the Hohokam and Anasazi left, I’ll bet that at least one of them looked over his or her shoulder to see their ladders leaning against the cliff walls of Chaco Canyon. (They’d pull them up into their caves if enemies threatened.)

Now the ladders remain, slowly crumbling in desert suns, moons, and the beauty of starlight.

full moon
empty
big and little dippers