A Tu | West Lake Stargazing: The Beauty of Uncertainty

Taking a boat on West Lake to watch the stars was another highlight, and also the activity with the most uncertainty. A week before departure, I started checking the Dali weather forecast repeatedly, but the team leader A Tu calmly told me it was still too early and we would see when the time came...

Later, when chatting with Wang Bin, the bird-watching teacher, he also mentioned that most nature observation is greatly affected by season and weather. If the wind is stronger, birds may be reluctant to take off and hide in the reed marshes. Conversely, if the wind picks up, the clouds in the sky move faster, and the stars might be 'blown' out.

At four in the afternoon, while we were still strolling by Erhai Lake, Brother Du ahead reported, 'West Lake is clear and feasible.' We immediately hurried to the meeting point. The weather was changing dramatically along the way. An hour later, we arrived at West Lake on time, and a heavy rain poured down. Brother Du looked at the sky and said meaningfully, 'The heavier the rain, the faster it leaves; it will stop soon.' Sure enough, it stopped in less than ten minutes.

Brother Du is a boatman by West Lake. For two consecutive days, he was at the helm for our bird-watching and stargazing. He could spot moving satellites in the sky first, tell us how many bird nests were in the bushes by the shore, and roughly how many weeks the eggs had been incubating. His boat fee was the highest among the boatmen, but there was a good reason for the price.

We boarded the boat around six or seven in the evening. The sky was still faintly lit, and the clouds in the sky merged with the distant Cangshan Mountain, all in a shade of dark blue. The lake was very open, with white egrets and other unknown waterfowl resting in patches of reeds. The boat was not spacious, just enough to fit two folding chairs side by side. The temperature difference between day and night in Dali was large; at night, wind picked up over the lake, and it turned quite cold. We had a charcoal brazier, which could be used both to heat food and to keep warm. And so the small boat drifted slowly off, floating on the lake for the next two hours or more, waiting for night to fall.

A Tu played pleasant music, and the surroundings were extremely quiet. If not for a little kid, the atmosphere would have been perfect. This child several times ambitiously expressed a wish to jump into the lake for a swim... Brother Du chose a good sheltered spot, the brazier was lit, and our eyes gradually grew accustomed to the darkness. By then, the first brightest star, Sirius a, had quietly climbed into the sky, followed by a second, third, fourth... Canis Major, Canis Minor, Gemini, the heart of Leo, the horns of Taurus... The wind blew away the floating clouds, revealing the pitch-black night sky and the sparkling stars. I sometimes even dared not blink, for fear that the treasures we had worked so hard to see might suddenly disappear. But A Tu across from me calmly opened a laser pen and drew arcs in the dark.

'This one is 7 or 8 light-years away, that one is 1500 light-years... They seem close to each other, parallel, but in three-dimensional space...'

'A Tu, do you believe in other life forms?'

'Mm, I believe, just maybe not carbon-based.'

'What about horoscopes?'

'Uh...'

In the night, I didn't take many photos, afraid that the light from my phone would disturb this darkness. The third picture was a quick shot of the night sky taken at the little kid's request. The fifth and sixth pictures were group photos with the night sky that A Tu took for us with a camera when we got back to solid ground. On the way back, there was a small interlude that moved me deeply: besides us and a fellow stargazer, A Tu's mother was also on this trip. The auntie followed us all the way to watch the stars. I don't know if she had come many times before or if she only had this chance because she was visiting her daughter. In the darkness, I heard A Tu say, 'Mom, you can rest assured this time.' 'I'm assured. I have nothing to worry about.' ❤️

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