Chapter 1
Matariki, Pleiades – the seven daughters of Atlas as the Greeks used to say, or Subaru in the modern Japanese.
Like the verb Subaru, in July, we cluster together to celebrate this wonder.
We’ve left our group of 300 that three Hawaiian Air 717s had shifted us from Oahu to Kona, and got weird looks as we left the 30c hotel in winter clothes and later clustered with my partner and friends after making the four-hour ascent from the beachfront heat of Kona up into the volcanic freeze of Mauna Kea at the Subaru Telescope to watch the stars from the planet’s tallest mountain. Gathering in awe at the large ’scopes before us peering deep into the darkest reaches of the heavens, then clustering below their horizon for warming hot chocolate and to peer through their portable, diminutive cousins at the heavens they expertly examine.
In the wide-open spaces of Mackenzie Country, I’ve lazily driven up from Tekapo to the Mt John Observatory to watch the sun set over the lake and then The Sisters appear in the dark sky as again, I freeze.
We go inside the UCan buildings to examine The Sisters though the large – but not very large – telescope, peering upwards to wonder why the Greeks decided they looked like the sisters of antiquity, but like them, we are gathered.
We look out at the lake, knowing that in a few, short hours, 2000 of us will cram onto the village green and like explorers that led our people here, we will begin our exploration of these vast planes. Like Arnie, We Will Be Back – well nearly as the footpath runs just below us!
Like Diwali, festival of lights, the green will be festooned with thousands of dimples: the mandatory head torches we must wear in the darkness, then spreading out like strings of Starlink satellites on their way into the so-near heavens.
Pleiades – so many names, but just The Sisters.
