A comet is just a comet, right?

One clear night this summer in mid-July, I stood out among the corn fields at the western dead-end of Ernesti Road and finally knew what it must have felt like to live during the Middle Ages.

For the record, I have always felt a touch of envy for those long-ago folks because medieval art is filled with paintings showing blazing comets in the sky, and I have always wanted to see a comet blazing across the sky above me.

And one clear night this summer, my dream was fulfilled as Comet NEOWISE hung like a Christmas ornament just beneath the Big Dipper. It took a while to find it with binoculars, but once I did, I was able to lower them and see it with my naked eyes, a faint streak of light smeared across the inky sky. Maybe not as spectacular as a medieval painting might depict, but a comet nonetheless. I’m sure as I tell the tale again and again, it’ll become blinding.

The comet was a surprise to astronomers, who only discovered it on March 27 this year. Most other comets are well-known regular visitors, like Halley’s Comet, which comes back every 76 years or so. Halley’s last appeared in 1986, and although I “saw” it then, it looked like nothing more than a fuzzy star without a tail. Certainly not the kind of sight you’d celebrate by checking it off of your bucket list.

But unexpected NEOWISE was different this summer, because there was no question that it was a real comet, tail and all.

My bucket list is one item shorter now.

Of course, it helped that Ernesti Road is a dark, unlighted strip of asphalt surrounded by corn, and that the Huntley skyline doesn’t fill the night with blinding light that makes stars hard to see.

I texted my Schaumburg buddy Bill to tell him how to find the comet, because he’s interested in things like that, too. “It’s just beneath the Big Dipper,” I said, “about halfway down to the horizon.”

He texted back, saying: “Here in the civilized world the sky is too bright. Barely made out the Dipper.”

So hooray for the uncivilized medieval life of Huntley, I guess. The coyotes agreed, as one by one they filled the night with their song—first a single howl, then one by one, another and another, until a choir of dozens chimed in. It was both beautiful and eerie at the same time.

Were they too celebrating the comet’s arrival? I don’t speak coyote, so I’ll never know. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility, though, because the comet was blinding. (See, that didn’t take long, did it?)

And so, as I say, I finally know what it must have felt like to be alive during medieval times. Comets in the dark summer sky outside of a small rural village, as wild beasts howl in the forest just beyond the crops. Yeah, that feels about right, in a medieval kind of way.

Of course, there are differences, aren’t there? After all, way back in the sixteenth century, a comet would have brought feelings of fear and apprehension, because a comet’s appearance was thought to presage disaster. Some thought a comet was a flaming sword sent by the gods that were upset with the behavior of their culture’s rulers, and that a plague would be sent to punish mankind for their folly. Even animals in the natural world would behave in startling ways.

Those medieval beliefs faded over the centuries, as astronomers learned that comets are regular visitors, as predictable as clockwork. Their appearance has nothing to do with our behavior here on earth. They are nothing more than celestial calendars, and if their arrival occurs at some time of plague or disaster, that is only an unconnected coincidence.

So although I feel lucky to have seen a comet at long last, I am comforted with the belief that this newly discovered NEOWISE is not an omen of any sort.

Oh, sure, there is nothing clock-like about the startling appearance of a comet that we’ve never seen before, one that suddenly shows up in the sky without warning in March of this year after a long, quiet, healthy winter.

But if we had rulers whose behavior is bad enough to enrage the gods to send a one-of-a-kind comet to scold us, we would hear beasts howling in the night, and we would have a plague of some sort to deal with, wouldn’t we?

A comet is just a comet, right?

Right?

Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

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