Ladies, it’s 5:09 AM and there’s lightning over the horizon.
And so ended our sleepout on the beach. We scrabbled our sleeping bags together and dragged them along the beach, stumbled up the path to the cabin, and trundled on into our nice dry previously un-sandy beds. The original plan had been to try to catch a lunar eclipse. It was scheduled to appear between three and six in the morning and we all figured that the chance we’d get up *out of bed* to watch it would be six of one and half dozen of another, even if we bothered to set an alarm. Anyway, I hadn’t slept out on the beach overnight for a good many years. UberKW and I went out quickly, leaving the little Mouse to toss and turn a bit more restlessly. I woke up quite a few times and for a long time I could see a huge full moon slowly traversing the night sky. I kept thinking how incongruous it was that only hours before we had all been sitting on the hot sand watching the sun head over the yardarm. Then I woke up again and the moon was gone, covered by clouds. As I went back to sleep again, I thought I heard a faint rumble of thunder. Far away. Maybe over the Sleeper Lake fire. I don’t know where. I slept a while. When I woke up again, the thunder was still far away and I lay there for a while, too inert to look at my phone to see the time. Finally, I poked my head out of my bag and there, over Mission Hill, was a flash of lightning. Okay, let’s check out the time. 5:09 AM EDT. Time to go. Good night? Or good morning? At least we didn’t encounter any skunks!