SMILE IN THE SKY

(01DEC2008)

I have enjoyed the changing weather here in Afghanistan, as I’ve enjoyed the beauty of the surrounding mountains, and the changing scenery of the sky.

Iraq was terribly boring climatically, and there was hardly ever anything to look at. It rained briefly the first week I was there, and briefly the last week, but in between it was incredibly hot, dreadfully dry, and I remember seeing a cloud once, briefly. The sky was otherwise always clear, the sun blazing down on us unthwarted.

Here, I find myself looking to the horizon most days, to see if the mountains are clear, and to track the progress of the snow on their peaks. The air has been dusty of late, and though you can almost always still make out the ring of mountains around the base, they are not as impressive through the murk.

Still, I find the sunsets impressive here, as the sun will disappear below the mountains well before true night, and the play of the light over the peaks, the reddened and pinkened clouds, are different each day.

The night sky can be impressive as well, but moreso on the smaller FOBs that have less light pollution. BAF and the nearby Afghani town emit a low-lying artificial haze, but it really only obscures the lowest of stars in the sky. The moon always looks bright, and I often see the constellation Orion on his hunt above us.

Tonight, as I walked from the chow hall to my room, I saw in the Southern sky the crescent moon shining clearly and, above it, two bright spots that looked like eyes and the whole conjunction looked like a smiley-face.

I would read later online that I was far from the only person who noticed it, and that some astronomers had been looking forward to the alignment of Jupiter, Venus, and the moon. By the time nighttime rolled around to North American, however, the moon had moved through the planets to the other side and appeared as a frown.

So guess I got the better end of that.