– In which Dorn describes a vision that few have experienced.
Here is the second promised story of a magical nature experience I’m grateful for, which I never would have had if we didn’t live where we do on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. (My first story is here.)
2. Many years ago (May 6-7, 2003 to be precise), when we hadn’t been living here long, there was a news blurb that a transit of Mercury across the sun was to take place that would be visible from the east coast of the US at about 6 AM. At that time I was working in Silver Spring, a 75-mile commute, and I got up before dawn to get ready to catch the bus into DC.
Because the Bay is to the east of us, we get to see some wonderful sunrises. That morning started out cloudless but hazy, and before I left for work I could watch the sun come up. Looking closely (which I could safely do for at least a few minutes as the sun came over the horizon), I was able to see a little tiny black dot on the surface of the red sun, slightly off center at about 4:00. I really don’t know for sure if it was Mercury that I was seeing, or maybe just a sunspot, but I told myself (and still tell myself to this day) that I was privileged to see something almost no one had seen since the beginning of time: the planet Mercury, backdropped by the sun, unaided with my naked eyes!
(This is just what it looked like back then, but it’s actually an “artist’s conception”. It’s a picture I took at sunrise yesterday, onto which I placed a small black dot with Photoshop.)
As always, thanks for listening!
Dorn
7/30/2019