One thing that two of my father's hobbies have in common: they involve looking through magnifying devises at objects that are very small or very far away. John tried to engage me and Kathryn in his hobbies when we were kids, giving us the chance to peer through the binoculars or the telescope to partake in his excitement.
The binoculars were rather hopeless for the longest time - John would point out a bird sitting on a branch and pass me the binoculars to take a peek. More often than not, I wouldn't be able to align the binoculars with the bird and, rather than marveling at its beautiful plumage, I would get frustrated because all I saw was blurry branches and leaves. Needless to say, I didn't get very excited and bird watching was not added to my list of interests.
I do have some funny memories associated with my dad's passion for birds. I must have been about four years old when John heard the call of an oven bird. He proceeded to jump up, proclaim something to the effect of "An ovenbird!! I've never seen one of those!" before running to grab his binoculars and trying to locate the bird. My four-year-old self wondered what an ovenbird might look like - for John to be so excited it must be really neat. I proceeded to imagine a rather square bird reminiscent of a stove. Now that I know what an
ovenbird looks like, I don't know if it was worth all the excitement.
John's passion for astronomy proved to be more contagious, despite a rough initiation to the hobby. John set up his binoculars on a tripod (he hadn't purchased a telescope yet) to view the moons of a planet (I think it was Saturn but, since I was six at the time, I could be wrong). Once he had the planet in focus, he invited Kathryn and I to take a look. In my hurry to see what all the fuss what about, I tripped over one of the tripod legs and sent the binoculars crashing to the ground where they met their fate on a patch of ice. Oops. John was not happy, especially since we lived in a
remote arctic community at the time - binocular repair shops were not part of the local economy.
Despite that event, which I don't think I'll ever live down, I remained fascinated by the cosmos. Throughout elementary and high school, we lived in a rural area where star gazing was possible in the absence of much light pollution (with the exception of the northern sky where the erie orange glow of Montreal drowned out the stars). The Milky Way was visible on clear nights. Occasionally, I witnessed northern lights and shooting stars. Magical is probably the best word to describe those warm summer nights spent laying on the dewy grass listening to peeper frogs and coyotes while contemplating the insignificance of my existence in light of the vastness overhead... at least on the nights without many mosquitoes.
One slow summer day when I was about 18, I was browsing the bookshelf for new reading material at my parent's place and picked up Stephen Hawking's
A Brief History of Time and dove in. I admit to never finishing it (probably like most of the people who bought it), but I made it about halfway through and was impressed and engaged by the theories. A CEGEP course in astrophysics/astronomy and some additional extra-curricular reading also resonated with me. The thought that everything, absolutely everything, originated from a singularity 13.7 billion years ago (thank you,
Wolfram Alpha ) still leaves me awestruck and feeling particularly insignificant.
The motivation for this post was the recent news coverage regarding the beginning of the end for the Hubble telescope, which will remain operational until about 2014. The beautiful and humbling images obtained from the telescope over the years have left me awestruck time and again and probably can be attributed, along with my father's hobby, to my appreciation for the cosmos.
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