Borrego Springs has been full of adventure for us and we plan more excursions into the desert and mountains. Bob used to off-road race in the are and made the trek over the mountains when he lived in SoCal.
Our trip here continues to be amazing. Last night was the Lunar Eclipse and it arrive late on the 20th and the full eclipse occurred in the early morning of the solstice. This is the first time both have occurred together since 1638.
What is particularly interesting to us is that this area is rich with Native American culture and ritual. What we were not able to capture was the sounds of the desert during this event. In the distance, packs of Coyote yipped and howled in unison. These sounds were punctuated by Native American flutes rolling across the valley from the mountains that surround us. At one point we heard Indian chanting that was transferred to us by the unique doppler effect that occurs in the desert. Perhaps miles away, we could hear voices clearly as we heard the flutes with the same distinction.
Another part of this location that is interesting is that Borrego Springs is one of only two certified International Dark Sky Communitees in the world (IDA http://www.darksky.org) The reality that all lights here are shielded from the sky provided us a wonderful experience despite the weather.
We consider ourselves lucky because it has been cloudy and raining for two days as the LA basin is flooding. Just before the beginning of the eclipse, the sky opened to give us a very dark sky view of the event. Below we captured a part on video before the clouds returned. Not bad for a little HD camcorder.
This is a timelapse video that took the better part of 45 minutes to play out.
[flashvideo file=http://www.chilltravelers.com/video/eclipse1.f4v /]
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