The Moon

A chunk of pitted, dusty rock orbits our planet. Its face is turned perpetually toward us, hidden and re-revealed in a performance that is repeated every 28 days, like a curtain being opened and closed on a pale singer in the middle of a dark, empty stage. The moon slides across the night sky, slave to a force beyond our reach, persuading the ocean to attend to its twice-daily ritual cleansing. At a closer distance, deep valleys, rocky mountain ridges, stunningly steep cliffs, and ancient plains emerge. The features are blurred, covered with a gritty blanket of ground-up comets and meteors and other space-borne flotsam. This is a wild country, mostly unexplored or trodden upon by curious travelers. But one site bears the marks of a human visit: there stands an American flag, stiffly at attention for all time, surrounded by deep fence-rail footprints and tracks made by a lunar dune buggy. Bold voyagers placed it there, marking the achievement of a challenge set by a young president. Now, nearest to us in the heavens but still so far, far away, the moon accompanies us in silence through the cold airless galaxy.