Flowers and Stars
Boarding school students bring all sorts of things to school with them, but it’s probably safe to say that most of them leave their telescopes at home. If they even have one, that is. Amateur stargazer and Cate senior Makena Fetzer does have a telescope. She and her father picked it up on Craigslist for $300, though Makena says that the 13.1 inch Dobsonian reflector model they scored is worth much more than that. Her father was kind enough to drive it all the way from his home in Arizona to the Mesa so she could keep up her interest in the night sky while she’s away at school, after her homework is done, of course.
Though she heads up the Astronomy Club and has hosted “star parties” on campus, Makena got inspired to take the telescope on a weekend trip this spring. So in early April, she, along with seventeen other students, six teachers, two faculty kids, and two dogs set off for an overnight on the Zaca Ridge in the Los Padres Forest and just about an hour’s drive from Cate – in search of some of the best stargazing in Southern California.
They arrived in the middle of the day on Saturday, and almost everyone donned backpacks hiked for the two-mile, 2000 foot climb to the campsite. The telescope got a ride up the famously steep roadway in one of the School’s four-wheel drive vehicles –– it’s a bit too heavy to be carried.
After they set up camp and the telescope, the group enjoyed a dinner of burritos and outdoor instructor Peter Bonning’s “famous chili verde,” the group the started looking skyward. Makena says there was a bit of cloud cover at first but eventually they were able to spot Jupiter, Orion, and Orion’s nebulae through the scope, along with billions of other stars that dot the night sky. Freshman Brad Gordon brought his camera and captured lots of star trail photos.
As it turned out, more than just the stars were aligned for this trip. Nature put on an earthbound show for the group the next morning in a wildflower display of lupines and California poppies. Willie Kellogg, science teacher’s Jamie Kellogg’s 10-year old son had scouted a nearby meadow the previous afternoon, and led the group to it. Bonning said he’d describe the students response to the flowery abundance as “shock and awe—it was that beautiful. They all sat amidst the color and watched the fog recede toward the ocean in slow motion show," he added.
As excited as she was about experiencing California’s celestial and earthbound beauty, Makena seemed just as pleased that it happened all. “That in the course of a few days you could approach a few different teachers and put something like this trip together – it just wouldn’t happen anywhere else. It was awesome.”
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