The sky was falling...

About 13 of us went to the Arizona desert just on the other side of Hoover Dam last night for the Perseid metor shower.
We set up some chairs and laid out some blankets and cracked open a couple bottles of wine and proceeded to stare into the sky for sign of fallings stars. I saw the first one of the night. It was a thick, short star fall that ended in a small explosion. Quite spectacular, actually. There were lots of others, all different in nature. Some making thin and long streaks of light, some leaving a vapor trail that vanished quickly. Some were short and fast, some were slow and they all came in different directions. It was impossible to figure out why meteors coming from the same source would fall in all different directions.
We could maintain our focus on the meteor shower for only about an hour and a half. Soon we were sitting up and talking, sipping wine and then someone turned on a car's CD player and conversations broke out among us.
It was kind of like magic under the stars. It was in the cool of the evening with a soft desert breeze. The milky way was out, that was the first time I had seen its glory in several years. The moon was hidden from view and we were miles away from the city lights. We had Francisco, our resident astronomy grad student, explaining things away. The wine was cold and sweet and the fellowship was warm.
It was the most comfortable party setting I experienced in years. I actually broke out and led a couple conversations. I told my friends about my blogging experiences. About the Catholic bloggers and their excellent faith, about the Israeli bloggers I accidently discovered last week and how the blogosphere stays on top of the latest news items.
It was a night of good memories.