acoolsha

General entries


In the woods 1 June 04

Section: article

Categories: Travels

I camped out in the woods over the long weekend, and on the first night when I lay down to sleep in the open, almost directly above me I saw the Big Dipper, of the constellation Ursa Major. It was a clear night and the view kept me awake. I couldn’t help watching to see if I could observe the stars’ movement. I ended up not sleeping very much, waking to look up at least eight or ten times during the night: I could in fact see the Big Dipper move incrementally counter clockwise towards the horizon, as if the sky were on a large disk (! – ”Eppur si muove”). The last time I woke to check was just before dawn and I couldn’t see the stars anymore, so I slept for a few hours.

Here is an interesting page related to Lakota Indian Star Knowledge and the Big Dipper.

The next night was so overcast that I couldn’t see any stars. Some rain woke me towards dawn and I got up to drag my sleeping things under a tarp hanging from some trees nearby. Just as I started pulling my things away, a large-looking brown hedgehog came waddling out of the tall grasses to my left and walked up the middle of where I had been sleeping and disappeared into the bushes to my right. It was more of a punctuated waddle, as if he were annoyed that he’d had to wait so long for me to move out of his habitual path.
In the morning I went to look in the grasses where he had come from: there was a matted-down area in the exact shape of his body, right down to his narrow head, which was pointing towards where I had been sleeping. (By the way, this was a European Hedgehog, Erinaceus europaeus—I double checked—which is in fact large and dark.)

  • Title: In the woods