Tonight, lacking the inclination to mountain climb, we bring out the frisbie from the car trunk and after tossing it around for a while, it eventually finds its way over the side of the mountain. Sometimes our jaunts to Diablo coincided with the East Bay Astronomical Society's 'star party' and we would watch as other amateur astronomers unload their telescopes and set them up. Everyone would be killing time, waiting for the sun to set and the stars to come out, by talking shop. Well, last time my tracking wasn't so hot and when I developed the film all the star images were badly trailed. Nighttime arrives to an expectant audience.
Sunsets are dramatic from up here.
Looking down into the valley you can see street lights begin to turn on. The illuminated freeway from Orinda to Walnut Creek splits in two as it meets 680, and then dives south through Danville toward the Livermore Valley. It looks, for all the world, like a river of light flowing from some iridescent spring in the East Bay hills. Here and there you see, in the darkness of the surrounding hills, constellations of street lights where small communities of humans go about their evening rituals. All that activity, all those lives being played out anonymously, represented microcosmically as flickering points of light.