A MOON TO REMEMBER, STARRY SKIES AND THE JEWEL BOX
That ghost episode was especially embarrassing because our group of five women was not the only group in residence at the camp just then.
A second group of nine were there, and even though Myrtle had scoped them out immediately but unsuccessfully for male specimens endowed with certain attributes guaranteed to ratchet up their irresistibility quotient in her eyes, I literally each day thanked the gods that be that I was not in that second group.
Several of the women in that group just couldn’t seem to get through their days without gracing the rest of us with knowledge of their superior lives, commenting “Well, this is not Starbucks coffee, that is for sure.” Or, “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for one night on my Royal Pedic mattress!” Or, “God, darling, this is SO not the Ritz.”
I kept waiting for Bunty to pick up at least one of those phrases, but, perverse little critter that he is, he of course stayed conspicuously mute. Go figure.
Even more annoyingly, two of the men in the other group set up nightly freight-train snoring competitions. One night I clocked them, assigning them points for decibel levels. Occasionally they even snored in sync, and Wow! The whole camp seemed to rumble then!
So you see it was doubly embarrassing when these reprobates stood gaping at poor Myrtle and me.
Fortunately, Myrtle saved the day, as she often does.
She waited until the guide and camp director had turned around, then in a charming little dance move, whipped herself around while yanking her nightgown up around her waist and wiggling her cute little bare bottom right at those gawkers, who emitted a collective gasp.
It was WONDERFUL, dear readers, and I got so inspired I pumped my fists in the air and started stomping my feet on that boardwalk.
However, that inelegant display drew the attention of the camp director, so I quickly covered it up by waving my hand at him and yelling, “Everything is OK – I just thought I saw a snake, but it was only a stick. Sorry, my bad!”
Well, it was no secret what THAT group would be talking about for the next week. But Myrtle and I giggled about her famous mooning episode for TWO whole weeks, so there!
You know, my little group of five women would have been just about perfect, dear reader, but for one small thing. THEY WOULD NEVER SHUT UP!
For example, that night we went out stargazing. Now I’m sure you will agree with me that a nighttime excursion in the Amazon to check out the stars in the Southern Hemisphere absolutely merits the respect of dead silence to commune appropriately with those stars, especially with the Southern Cross, that constellation of such heralded beauty, fame, navigational importance, and spiritual symbolism through the ages.
But the whole while we navigated the tributary to get out into that wide inland lake, our group jabbered and giggled like fishwives; and boy, there was a moment when I just wanted to tip our little wooden rowboat right over simply to shut them up.
Now don’t ask me, dear reader, what fishwives sound like, because I have never heard one and do not really know what they sound like. I just thought that phrase resonated very well right here. If you disagree, please feel free to come up with your own phrase for a gaggle of humans that won’t muzzle their mouths.
Anyway, I realized that I probably had better not tip the boat over because that would land me in the water as well as them, and wasn’t it just the day before that we had gone upriver a bit and seen some of those crocodiles?
Plus, we had tried to cook up those Piranhas for dinner that night, the ones we caught earlier that day, the very ones with those razor teeth, and while I watched the cook try to filet the meat from the bones, I decided on the spot that those little suckers would find a lot more meat on me than we found on them.
Therefore, no dice. I am not going to give them the opportunity. I really don’t care what pretty names they have: Black Spotted Piranha, Orange-throated Piranha, Ruby-throated Piranha, etc. etc. etc. They are ALL fish that would LOVE to rip me apart at the seams.
Anyway, we left camp about 9:00 pm in our little rowboat, headed up the tributary, with our guide rowing and our group jabbering away.
As the river narrowed and the jungle started closing in on us on both sides, our jabberers finally grew silent, and the sounds of the jungle were then all around us, snuffles and hoots and rustles and squeaks.
Myrtle slid further toward the middle of our seat and sort of gripped my arm while pretending she was fine. But I knew her little brain was firing on all cylinders with visions of snakes dropping down onto us from the trees we were passing under.
In about a half hour we came out from the canopy of trees into the open water of the lake, and our guide told us to look up.
There was a collective, breathless OHHH from our group as we tried to process the sight of those millions of stars that suddenly exploded in the sky above us. How could they be so amazingly visible with our naked eyes! How could there be so MANY of them?!
Our guide started pointing out the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere, including the famous Southern Cross, or Crux Constellation as it is correctly called.
As he talked, I saw with excited disbelief that I could even see two satellites turning and blinking up there as they passed slowly over us.
Myrtle was so engrossed in what we were seeing she even forgot to monitor the waters around the boat for water snakes.
Our guide reminded us that we had seen a stone image of the Crux constellation in Machu Picchu, and that the Incas called it Chakana, meaning “the stair.” It symbolizes the Inca religious trinity.
Not only is Crux a constellation of noted beauty, but it also has one of the youngest star clusters ever discovered. That star cluster is properly called Kappa Crucis but is commonly referred to as the Jewel Box because its discoverer said it looked like “a casket of variously colored stones.” It has an estimated age of only 14 million years.
OK, then, just a baby. How in the world we can be expected to get our heads around a fact like a baby who is only 14 million years old, I just don’t know. But c’est la vie, dear reader.
This interesting baby cluster of 100 stars can be seen only from the southern hemisphere. The brightest stars in this cluster are super giants, which is probably why the cluster has a visual magnitude of 4.2, and the three brightest stars in this cluster have been nicknamed traffic lights because of their colors.
As we sat out there in the middle of that lake in the Amazon that dark night, with our guide’s voice getting quieter and quieter until he was almost whispering, I started to feel disoriented.
How do you process the Immensity of the cosmos and our own insignificance within it?
I dragged my eyes down from the sky, and I swear, dear reader, I saw myself floating out over the water!
I think I must have started to tip over a little then, because suddenly Myrtle grabbed my arm and jerked me toward her, and I came out of my trance.
Wow! That was a bit scary! And certainly not like ME! I think I scared Myrtle too, which is not an easy thing to do.
Myrtle in a hiss: “What in the HELL are you trying to do, fall right out of this boat?!”
As you will remember, dear reader, when Myrtle uses a curse word, we know right off that we have a serious situation in hand.
She was quite royally vexed with me, truth to tell, which I have learned by long experience happens only, or mostly, when she is afraid for me or my safety. So, I totally forgave her for her rudeness yanking me out of my trance like that.
Actually, when I think about it, it would have been a little less than perfect to die in that murky water deep in the Amazon and never be found. Because really, how could anyone find you after those crocodiles had you for dinner? Or those piranhas?
So, I totally forgave her, even though she kept up her huffiness for three whole days!
Everyone was blessedly quiet and subdued on the return journey to the camp, and quite quickly the camp settled into the very welcome silence of sleep.
About 4:00 in the morning a dog started barking furiously. Myrtle’s squeal was quickly muffled, and I figured she had buried her head under her pillow. I did the same thing.
We never did find out why that dog was barking. I think our guide did not want to tell us.
To be continued…