Last night I went out to watch a comet pass the earth.
The plan was simple, be on the trail an hour before sundown, walk in, wait for night, walk on, sea on my right, eyes on the sky, turn for home when I felt like it, nothing complicated.

It was one of those bitter winter days when everything is exposed, sky the colour of tin, no feeling in the sun. The wind like searching fingers, invading every crack in my clothing, pushing into my eyes.

Walking out along the coast in the gathering dusk all sound was swallowed in the wind, even the sea booming against the cliffs drowned out by the pitched gale rising and falling and pulling at my feet as I wound my way towards the headland I’d selected for the night.

I needed to be away from town, away from the roads, in the proper darkness where nobody would drive past or come stumbling along bleeding light, blinding me.

Twilight was spent slowly climbing off the shore, neither seeing nor hearing anyone or anything else, not even my own laboured breathing as I sweated up the hill in spite of the cold. From the crest of the cliffs the sun lay prostrate on the ocean, glowing orange, elongating out from the horizon over the water.

I paused, caught my breath, pulled the battered turf bag out of my bag, spread it on the ground, sat down back into the frigid wind, made a cup of coffee, burner held steady between my boots.

Then I stood and turned and watched the sun sink beneath the sea, drank my coffee, enjoyed the hard edge of the wind in my face and the mounting anticipation of night.

Night began from the very top of the sky and slowly beetled down toward the horizon, before its advance the wind died, suddenly all was silent. I stood there and finished my drink, aware now of my heart beating, of the sea below my feet reasserting itself, of the streams gurgling and the birds chittering in the tall grass surrounding me.

With the sun gone it was now terribly cold, before the last light shrank beneath the horizon I had shouldered my bag and began to move along the headland, down the winding goat track I’d followed the last time I was here, craning every few steps to look at the sky, watching it turn from blue to purple to black over the course of the next few miles.

I watched the plough fade into view at my one o’clock, tracked the satellites streaking across the night in their sterile arcs, so clean and sure compared to the stars. At the next hilltop I stood and glassed the ship’s lights playing against the dissolving horizon until the very last of the day was gone, then stayed on to watch the night sky fill out.

The moon rose over the fifth mile, bright and yellow, almost stronger than the sun had been.
Strong enough to dull the stars and cast me in silhouette against the hillside.

It was obvious now that I would not see what I had come to, not least because the moon brought the wind back with it, robbed of its fury but bitterly cold, and still strong enough to make steadying binoculars impossible.

I continued, eyes to the countryside now rather than the sky. In the moonlight the streams and puddles on the trail glowed, little silver pools punctuating the nightvision sea of grey and black. The moon climbed further as I walked on, passing in and out of the clouds, taking turns with the stars to light my way.

As I walked I felt myself empty out into the grass around me, life falling away, the night a place out of time.
I have been out under moonlight before, in different places, with different people, as a different person, but this night I went alone, myself, for nothing or nobody else. I felt at ease, at home.

The moon at the peak of her powers cast the countryside in dullest greens, the sky bruised blue, the stars dim and flickering.

At the end of the headland I stopped with my back to a boulder and watched the lights of the town across the bay, a riot of colour in the middle of black night.

I sat there in silence and watched them until I began to shake, then I rose and went back the way I came.

With thanks to Starbreaker for initial feedback and critique.