What the White Owl Knew
Strange things happen when you stay up all night. I first discovered this at the age of nine, when my friend Rita and I played Monopoly all night and sneaked down the stairs and went outside to see the sun come up. It was strange to hear traffic start out on the highway two blocks away, to see the milkman begin his rounds, to see the sky turn from black to gray to pink to a bleeding gold.
Sixty-two years later, I have just had a similar experience. After a sleepless night, just as I was ready to fall asleep, I experienced leg cramps along with a difficulty in breathing that I’ve tended to have lately. It is not exactly that I can’t breathe, but a feeling that perhaps soon I won’t be able to. These two factors drove me outside and into the pool which, although it had been too hot to swim in at midnight, now had cooled to a lukewarm temperature above body temperature, but barely. (My pool is filled every other day with water from very hot mineral springs.)
Not feeling like doing my regular exercises, I floated and swam a bit, but very soon noticed a very large light just above the horizon. At first I thought it was another in a series of recent wildfires lifting its head over the mountain. It was a large glowing shape much bigger than the moon. I had looked at my alarm clock as I rose from my bed, and at 5 a.m., surely the moon wouldn’t just be rising. It was clouded like a fire obscured by smoke, and for a good five or ten minutes, I was sure this was what it must be, but as it rose higher over the neighbor’s house, I realized that it was something in the sky. It was roughly oval in shape, with the points of the oval pointing up and down, not side-to-side.
As it rose higher in the sky it grew larger but stayed indistinct—like a large fuzzy, uneven-sided bright oval larger than the sun and somewhat fuzzied and diluted by clouds. It had an otherworldly effect and as the stars came out above it, it seemed in stark contrast to the clear silhouettes of the palm trees further to the West. Did the moon ever rise at 5 a.m.? Surely not. The moon rose at night and set in the morning as the sun rose. Could this be the sun rising at 5 a.m.? If so, there were no colors of sunrise flooding the sky around it.
Much too big for a plane, what sort of phenomenon could it be? The very early morning darkness gave no other hint of the day to come. I floated in a surreal eeriness, tempted to go in to look up moonrise and moonset times, but some superstition and need to see what happened next kept me floating in the warm soup of my pool. Suddenly, something large lifted into the sky above the neighbor’s house and flew directly in front of the glowing object in the sky to swoop over the pool and then barely clear the roof of my house in a swift arc. At first stunned by what seemed to be part of the eerie situation of the light in the sky, I soon realized that It was a large white owl–one my friend Patty had seen twice years ago but which I had never seen in the eighteen years I’ve been living in this house.
I floated, stirring arms and legs as though flying myself, completely mesmerized by what seemed like magic. Who would believe it? All-in-all, I remained in the pool for a half hour, watching the eerie light as it rose almost imperceptibly higher. Its shape was nebulous, as though hidden behind thick clouds, at times growing more pointed, like a vague quarter moon with its tips pointing to the right and a bit tilted to the left.
Until finally, without ever rising 1/16th of the way across the sky, within seconds it vanished. One second it was there, the next gone.
Was it thick clouds that had obscured it that quickly? Only the evening before, I had found my waterproof camera and looked in vain for its battery. If I had located it, I could have taken a photo of the phenomenon. With the light gone and the water cooling, I groped my way up the steps from the pool and into my bedroom, where I dried off, slipped into my nightgown and picked up the laptop I’d abandoned in bed.
“Moonrise and Moonset for Ajijic, Mexico” I typed into the browser and was quickly presented with the following information:
Moonrise, 3:29 a.m., Moonset, 3:33 p.m. How could I have not known that the moon sometimes rises and sets in the daytime? By the 31st of the month it will rise at 5:17 a.m.! I then remember having seen the moon in the sky long after the sun has risen, but somehow what my eyes have seen has not been seized by my mind!
It now occurs to me that I can take my regular camera out to see if there is anything to see. I do so, looking up at the totally dark sky. The first birds have begun their twittering even though no light other than a few stars prompts their songs. I see one wispy cloud in the pitch black sky, a bit higher than the light I had seen a half hour before. And then I see a brief glow which vanishes before I can snap a photo.
Darkness.
Then another dim glow. It has to be the moon emerging now and then from behind clouds. I snap photo after photo but nothing shows up in the frames I check. Then suddenly, one more chance. I snap the shutter, click to see what I have captured.
It is not much, but it has at last assumed a vague moon size and shape and at least it is faint proof of my last hour’s adventure.
The first church bells of the morning peal out. When I return to my room, It is 6 a.m. by my bedside clock.
I look again at the screenshots I’ve made from the moonrise/moonset site.
What the white owl has probably always know I have learned for the first time tonight.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Interesting story! I love it.
The Catalyst
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Thanks, Nila.
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Taking moon gazing to a new level
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Although I hate for you that you had a sleepless night, this is a fascinating story! I hope you will have another encounter with the white owl 🙂 !
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Thanks, Janet. 1:46 and I finally have my prompt poem finished and table set for friends who are coming to play Mexican train. With three hours sleep, I think I won’t be hard to beat. Thankfully, the beasts let me sleep in until 10 today. That is very very rare. They are usually agitating to be fed somewhere between 6 and 8.
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This is totally fascinating, mysterious, and romantic, Judy.
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Thanks, Dolly. I love those midnight and after nights in the pool. nice to be that close to nature.
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I’m glad you saw the white owl. I’ve stayed up all night more often than I should have and watched the sun come up. I have quite a few pictures of the sun and moon in the sky together. Sometimes, a few stars, too. They aren’t great pictures. I never have the right lens for those pictures. I’m not even sure what the right lens would be, actually. Longer? Longer and wider? Is there any such lens or is that really a telescope?
I used to set my alarm for 15 minutes before dawn (which is, on July 4th in New England, at 4:36 am) to leave me time to get to wherever I am most likely to see the whole rising and I always hope for a few clouds to reflect colors.
That feeling of not being able to breathe — soon — might be an allergy and a hint of asthma. That’s how I feel and an inhaler really helps. For me, it means my bronchial tubes are a little tight. it happens more often in the spring and fall and right now, our pollen count has been over 2000 for almost a week until today’s rain. That’s a LOT of pollen and you don’t need to have asthma to have trouble breathing. Even the dogs are sneezing.
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I had extensive asthma tests last year and they say I don’t have asthma. Last year the worst was while retiling my floors. I ended up going by ambulance to the hospital that time. Sometimes I think it is psychosomatic and I should see someone, but i definitely think it is pollen combined with heat. Hopefully the rainy season will help..and losing weight would definitely help, as well. Why is my willpower so good in some areas and so weak in others?
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Sorry you couldn’t sleep – but you certainly got some reward for it!
Curiously, i was thinking just this morning, before i read your post, of the Moonrise pattern, how it changes and repeats the same pattern every 28 and a bit days (Making 13 ‘moonths’ in 1 year!! -so why are there only 12 moonths on all calendars and 12 constellations or houses of the Sun and Moon in the sky??)
Turns out the moon rises at dusk and sets at dawn on the day of a full moon, after which for 7 days (1 week – is how time was calculated before clocks) the moon shrinks from waning gibbous to a half moon and rises progressively later each day until the 3/4 moon when it rises around midnight. Then for 7 more days (like now) it is a waning crescent until the New Moon and rises later and later in the early AM until finally it rises with the Sun. After that the reverse two sequences mean the sun rises before the Sun for 7 days until the half moon (when it rises at midday) and then for another 7 when it catches up with the place we came in rising at dusk and setting at dawn as the Moon is full. 🙂
Seemples!.
Why there are 13 moons a year and 13 weeks in one Season is a little less simple to understand however?
I had my own astronomical mystery tonight. I went out to look for Jupiter (brightest object in the sky other than Sun and Moon at the moment) and Mars i thought i had found mars (was wrong – it had already set!) and was about to look away when a bright white flash caught my eye close to what i thought was the Red Planet. I looked harder and then saw it again a little further away than before. I watched it blink on and off, on for one flash, off for 3-4 seconds, gradually becoming dimmer with each flash. First i thought it to be a plane but then thought better of it. Then i thought of the International Space Station but that doesn’t rotate and that was clearly what was causing the dimming fast flash/long blink.
I checked on the web for satellites over Perth and found it was the #12 Global Positioning Satellite that our mobile phone networks and all navigation depends upon! How cool was that? 🙂
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The Ethiopian and Julian calendars have 13 months so they seem to be more attuned to the moon than our Gregorian one. Their mottoin Ethiopia is “Thirteen Months of Sunshine.” I can see you are as fascinated by the moon cycles as I am. Just always amazing to learn something new that you should have known your whole life!! (Talking about me, not you.)
Cool about seeing the satellite and being able to figure out what it was. I’ve only seen two satellites in my life, both since I’ve been living in Mexico.
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If you want to see the International Space Station fly overhead use this handy guide! https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/index.cfm
I Love learning about the Moon ( and also planet) cycles! 🙂
Did not know of the Ethiopian calendar ( great motto that!) but i’m pretty certain both the Greeks and the Romans had a 12 month system although curiously their last month (Latin: Decembre) uses the prefix for 10???
because they had years with only 354 days though the seasons would soon be in the ‘wrong months so they would sometimes need to ‘add’ an extra month ( they used the same month name consecutively for the new one) so some years would have had 13 months, but only 12 month names. 🙂
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