These mornings, robins begin their pre-dawn morning chant, just as high above them, the star group Cepheus lies due south of the North Star; that is when the constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin, passes overhead between Pegasus and Lyra; when the Pleiades show on the eastern horizon, and when Sagittarius follows Scorpio into the far west.
The coincidence of these stellar positions before sunrise with the state of the landscape and weather in and around my home is easily related through natural history to the blossoms of the first roses and lilies.
In addition, such coincidence might give rise to speculation that the arrival of hummingbirds or appearance of robin fledglings or the emergence of praying mantises has something to do with the configuration of the sky before dawn.
After all, Chaos Theory posits, among other things, the possibility that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in your yard might be causally related by a kind of sensitive dependence to a hurricane in the Caribbean. Edward Lorenz, a physicist who named the Butterfly Effect, noted that “if the theory were correct, one flap of a sea gull’s wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever.”
If the forces of Earth might be so connected, why not flowering rhododendrons with the stars of Cepheus, peonies and roses with Pegasus, lilies with Lyra, clover with the Pleiades?
Once sensitive dependence is applied to events across the Cosmos, then the mind is free to make connections as it wills, and anything is possible.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the fourth week of Early Summer. In the meantime, flap your wings. Put the universe in motion.
