As a resident of Craig, a small town in the southernmost tip of southern Southeast Alaska, I miss a lot of things that happen in the sky. You know, because it rains all the time.

Well, not all the time, but you know what I mean. One hundred inches, give or take, per year, coupled with frequent bouts of gale-force-and-beyond winds and you have layers of iron-clad reasons for staying inside even when cool stuff is happening up above. I’ve missed comets, meteors, constellations, evening planets and morning stars.

But there are exceptions to this rule.

In the mid-nineties there was the most amazing show of the Northern Lights. My young family and I drove out of town (that doesn’t take but a minute around here) and sat out in a different kind of rain. We climbed on the hood of our truck and watched and listened while color turned into sound and back into color, snapping and sizzling, blue-green-red, rolling and tumbling from one end of the firmament to the other.

Another time, my husband, teeny-tiny Elder Son, and I were heading across a narrow stretch of water in an open skiff. There wasn’t a cloud anywhere; the night sky was black as coal, the stars as hard as diamonds. Below us the water was swirling with phosphorescence, and we could see fish swimming placidly through the pale green glow. The world was a snow globe that had never been shaken.

Then, there was the other night. Everybody was telling me that there was going to be a total lunar eclipse coming soon, and that it would also be a blood moon. Apparently, the moon would glow red as it disappeared behind the encroaching earth-shadow.

In pretending that I was really going to see this bit of witchery*, I learned a bit about eclipses. Notable factoid: while solar eclipses are only visible in select slices of the globe, due to the relative size of the sun (the eclipsee) and the moon (the eclipser); a lunar eclipse can be seen anywhere on the night side of the earth. This eclipse reached “totality” at 10:30 p.m. Alaska time, which translates to 2:30 a.m. Virginia time. Which is why most of my family back home missed it. Even my star-gazing sister Laura gave it a miss.

Anyway, at about 8:30 p.m. I donned my eclipse-watching uniform: pajamas, robe, coat, stocking hat and deck slippers**; dug the binoculars out of their hiding place in the truck, and prepared to be amazed. What’s really amazing about the situation is that I was surprised to see a sudden cloud cover obscuring the scene. I went inside, and repeated the performance at about 10:15, only to encounter the same stubborn blankness. I went inside and went to bed. Let it go, I thought. Five minutes later, I received a text from my husband, who while visiting his mother in Ketchikan had been talking to someone in Craig.

“Look now,” was all it said.

So I struggled back into my amateur astronomer’s outfit and made my way back outside.

And there it was. The eclipse was almost total at that moment, leaving a glowing red crescent in an otherwise slate-black sky. I gazed in wonder, feeling grateful that I had science and not witchcraft to explain it to me, and eventually went back inside.

Sometimes, it really is best to cut one’s losses and move on. But on the other hand, sometimes just giving it one more try is exactly what will bring you your heart’s desire.

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For your further edification

*Seeing the moon disappear behind a frothy red curtain could almost make one sympathize with the Dark Agers when they responded by running around looking for someone to set on fire.

**Deck slippers are ankle-high rubber boots. It’s a commercial fishing thing.