Orion ballet

There’s a good-sized hill to the southwest of my house, Blanton Heights, and atop the hill there’s a TV station, KVAL. And above the station are KVAL’s transmission towers, four great vertical poles with red lights evenly spaced on them, every other one slowly winking on and off to warn aircraft at night and in the fog. These lights, I can say from experience, are otherworldly landmarks to children taken on long car rides in the dark, strange structures silently calling out to distant aliens.

Tonight when I left my house for my evening walk, Rigel, the great blue-white star in Orion’s foot, was twinkling up there among those red tower lights, and it looked like the Great Hunter was dancing en pointe up on the hill. About 20 minutes later, Rigel was enough lower that it seemed Orion had tripped and was slowly toppling over into the Coast Range, or maybe even the ocean.