Honey...Moon-Trek!

NASA image of Earth Rise on the Moon!

An achingly uncluttered skyline makes Earth-rise on the moon yet another spectacular stellar video. The guide had assured us that this 800 feet high peak on the crater Peta Vius offered the best views of the Earth. The orb of the Earth stealing over the ink-black horizon prickled tears in my eyes, reminding me that Dan was somewhere up there, going about his duties normally.            

      As the Earth rose, shining down, the guide’s excitement reached a crescendo. “The classic transparent Blue Marble-that is the Earth from space. You are all lucky you could visit moon during this phase,” he had exhorted looking at me strangely,-‘why was I not as excited as the rest of them?’ How could he know that I was here, trying to run light years from a recent heart-break? Despite my sadness, I could not help but marvel at the blue beauty. Was this my Earth? A place where we cried and laughed, loved and hated, warred and never made peace? Could such a beauty harbour anything unpleasant or hideous?         
       “Now is the Lunar midnight. It is the period of full-Earth (like the full moon on the Earth) and that’s why you can see the whole Earth shining splendidly. Enjoy the Earth shine on the moon….er…ma’am, is anything the matter?” He had to finally ask me.        

“Uh, no! No! Could they be seeing us from Earth? I mean….could they see the moon now?” I was wishing Dan could see how sad I was.

“Hell, no. This is new-moon day on Earth. No. They can’t see us…Over the next twenty-four Earth hours, you will see the Earth rotating and showing off all her continents.” The blue-green phytoplanktons, the hazy dust plumes and dunes of the deserts, the whiteness of the poles and the blueness of the oceans crossed the Earth’s surface in a kaleidoscopic motion. Somewhere in its teeming billions is the one man I ever loved…

In another two Earth days there would be sun-rise on the moon.( If full-Earth occurs on the 27^th Earth day, sunrise occur on the 2^nd day of the next Lunar cycle. This is because one Moon day = one moon year = 27.3 Earth days as the moon takes the same time to go round the Earth as it does to rotate around itself.) The moon was now awash in Earthshine as the stars in the black sky helped navigation. The stars, visible even on a lunar ‘day’, alongside the sun, are an important means for navigating on the moon. (Moon lacks magnetic field thus making a mockery of our coveted compasses.)

Our next tourist point was the Mare Tranquillitatis, a flat plain on the Moon erroneously named as the Sea of Tranquillity.(‘mare’ means plain, ‘maria’ is plural) “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the plain where Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon had landed.” He showed the famous, well-preserved foot print of Neil Armstrong-the small step for a man and a giant step for mankind!. “See? No atmosphere on the moon, no breeze or wind or storm, so the imprints stay on forever.….If any of you so wish, we have a piece of plain here where you could write something or imprint your hands or feet for posterity.”                                                                     

               ROSE DAN, I wrote for posterity on the Mare Crisium, the plain on the moon which sees the first sunrise. He would never come this far, seeking proof of my love for him! Only the universe would know.

“Look at the sand on the moon. It is one meter deep at places and twenty at others.” I sifted moon dust between my fingers. It grated on my palms. Smooth as it seemed, it was actually the result of the surrounding rocks breaking down to finer, sharp pieces.  I picked up a nearby rock wondering if we were allowed to take back any souvenirs.                                                         

“ Don’t even think of it ma’am. It is illegal…. Besides, you would have to store it in dry nitrogen there to prevent Earth’s atmosphere from rusting it. Moon rocks-anorthosites-have no water and as they were formed when there was no or very less oxygen, the iron in them remains crystallised, in its pure form. Pity it would have made colourful, interestingly shaped pendants though!” The moon rocks, formed 4.6 billions years ago along with the universe, were of the igneous variety- formed by the cooling of the lava. For rocks that old, the nascent atmosphere had kept them startlingly fresh.

Something impacted the surface a few meters from where we were. Expectedly, but amusingly for us, the noiseless impact did not kick up as much as a grain of moon sand! No wind-nothing flies, nothing makes a sound! There could be neither bird songs nor floral fragrances on the unromantic moon! “….The moon takes hundreds of hits and has 3 trillion craters larger than one-meter diameter and these give the characteristic pock-marked appearance…Yet another,” he said as I ducked beneath a non-existent roof.

Next was the arial tour. The quiet wilderness of the moon evoked as much solitude as awe. The mountain ranges, the ridges, canyons and the rilles that looked like permed hair underlined the hostility of this beguiling satellite that has ever been a source of inspiration to romantics since Earth-birth. The rugged Appenine mountains to the south of the oval walled plain of Plato wrenched my yearnings further. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to have a bed of white roses with a border of green-orange bushes around a tiny house here…on this beautiful walled plains of Janssen or Pluto underneath eternal stars….with Dan and babble of children?                                               
       I wished I could just fall off into space and disappear into oblivion. Could I end my misery by just walking out on the moon, bare, bereft of any protective gear and die of extreme temperature or radiation?..... First suicide on the moon?

“….. That’s Mare Insularum-the plain where Apollo 12 landed. As you all know, the Apollo programme between 1969-72 put a total of 12 astronauts on the moon. From July 1969 when man first set foot on moon, to this day when you can boast of space tourism and Moon Odyssey, hasn’t humankind come a long way? ….Anything we can’t do?”

 “Yes. Make up.” The universe was enormous, overwhelming and our lives too short for petty break-ups. But would Dan understand?

“When are we rocketing back?” I interrupted him, tears rearing to stream down.

“I see that you have been moon-sick madam. The next space shuttle is due by sunrise, with a fresh load of tourists. We may be able to accommodate you back on that if you wish…But you still haven’t seen the lunar fault line - the ‘straight wall’ (which is visible from the Earth on Day 8 of Lunar cycle). You must see the places where the Lunar Prospector of USA or India’s Chandrayaan I MIP impacted on the south pole of the moon, with the hope of finding ice…You must visit Gassendi, the largest crater and the sinus Iridium (bay of rainbows) on the edge of the Mare Imbrium…” The Earth seemed so distant  and unreal now. How foolish we are- people, countries, factions- to think and fight over small things in such a colossal universe, sullying the beauty of Earth. At that moment I learnt that to belong we must give. Too late, maybe. Dan…will I ever see you again?
             I did….When he got off the space shuttle that glorious sun-rise.

   “Dan!”

            “Rose! I wanted to have my honey on the moon!” he said sealing my happy lips with a looney kiss!

Full moon  in January known as 'Wolf moon'