In keeping with the flow of reviewing good thoughts at the start of the week, since I've had West Virginia on my mind (and was singing and playing with Lisa last night a song about West Virginia), I thought I'd post a few things that were really nice about living in isolation for a year:
The night sky. When there was anything other than a full moon, to walk out at night and look up was ever awe-inspiring; light pollution was practically zero, due to the isolation factor.
The juxtaposition of nature and technology. There were all kinds of radio telescopes throughout the site, and riding a bike around you'd see deer hanging around them, munching on the grass and looking completely at ease.
The beauty of the technology. Radio telescopes, from the outside at least, are very quiet. So to find a place to sit and watch, you'd see the dishes glide gracefully as they'd transit from source to source, or adjust slightly as they moved from on-source to off-source. A sight such as that was the first thing that really got me hooked onto radio astronomy, back before my year-long pilgrimage to Green Bank took place.
Listening to the music of the technology down in the engineering lab, with all the vacuum pumps and cryostat coolers and people tinkering around on things.
The good-hearted people. I remember one evening, for instance, when the lab's cleaning crew whom I had befriended offered to make me a dinner of stir-fried vegetables. The did something like heated up a bunch of oil and threw in some raw vegetables and fried the hell out of them. It was really nasty, but they meant well, and I ate it.
The awareness that I am comfortable just being. There are obviously not a lot of distractions in Green Bank, and if you're not at ease with yourself, being there for months on end could drive you crazy.
Discovering bluegrass in its home turf.
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