While hiking one evening I stumbled upon a unique little feature of these rocks in the Mojave, a perfect little organic window up to the heavens, carved over time as softer, more brittle rock within the larger column of rock succumbed to the erosive and regular winds of the area that howl through the canyons and above the passes. I thought this scene just might give me a great opportunity to combine its geological oddity with a glimpse of the Milky Way later on that night, and it didn’t disappoint: a perfect little portal to view ancient light, finally hitting our eyes on earth but actually created millennia ago. It might sound cliche or cheesy, but going out and catching a glimpse of the stars really is a sort of time travel: you are literally looking at something that happened thousands and thousands of years ago.
               When I was done shooting the stars this evening, I turned on my spotlight for the hike back to my car, and upon pointing it to the near hillside, maybe 100 meters away were two glowing green eyes that belonged to an adult Coyote, staring at me. I took a quick thirty paces towards my car, turned around to see where it was, and it had moved a little closer, eyes still aglow, now maybe 80 meters out. I took an even quicker fifty paces to the car and turned, now the eyes probably 50 meters away. This gave me a good little shot of adrenaline, but finally I reached my car without incident, the coyote surely just curious. Or hungry.