Star mapping with a thrifted telescope

By Sol Runemaster

Every Wednesday and Saturday at eight o'clock, I carry a thrifted telescope to the ridge behind my adobe studio and pretend I am an astronomer. I am not. I am a man with a clipboard, a red flashlight, and a growing collection of hand-drawn charts that would make a professional weep gently into their sextant. Star mapping, for me, is not about precision. It is about relationship. Which constellations keep showing up when I am lonely? Which meteor showers arrive the week a client finally quits the job that was eating their sleep? The innocent archetype gets mocked for seeing signs everywhere. Maybe. But I have also seen a hawk circle me three times before a workshop that changed my career. I am not giving up pattern recognition just because cynics call it childish. The equipment is humble and the practice is not The telescope cost forty dollars at a estate sale in Eldorado. It has a

scratch on the lens that makes Jupiter look slightly impressionist. I love it anyway. My charts are ink and guesswork. I note rising times, emotional weather, who showed up to group mapping nights, what songs got stuck in my head. It is part science journal, part diary, part love letter to a sky that does not ask for credentials. Camping taught me the basics — how to find north without shame, how to read heat leaving the ground, how to share silence with friends who talk too much in town. Santa Fe dark-sky pockets are shrinking, but on good nights you can still taste the Milky Way. People arrive with apps that name stars instantly. I ask them to wait five minutes before tapping screens. Not as purity test — as courtesy to their own eyes adjusting. Wonder needs night vision. Meteor showers as community calendar Two months ago I scouted locations for a star retreat and walked into a meteor

shower I had not checked the calendar for. Meteors stitched the valley while I stood there holding a clipboard like an idiot. I cried, which is on brand. Last week, during evening Tai Chi, sunset turned nuclear orange and a secondary shower began — pink sky, white streaks, my students forgetting their forms to point upward. We laughed and called it syllabus. I schedule mapping nights around showers when I can, but the best ones are always accidents. That tracks spiritually. The universe seems fond of unlisted events. Petroglyphs that looked back In February I found petroglyphs on a hike — spirals, star clusters, figures that might be hunters or might be constellations if you squint with hope. I sat with them for an hour feeling the kind of quiet that is not empty. I am careful about meaning. I do not claim ancestral knowledge I do not carry. I claim resonance — the human impulse to mark

sky on stone so we remember we are small and included. Those carvings are feeding my conference Tai Chi session and a celestial art collaboration with a local painter who attended my astrology workshop. She heard me talk about the petroglyphs and said, 'I want to paint what you see when you look up.' I said yes before my impostor syndrome finished its coffee. The gallery show debuts next spring. I am contributing stories, rising charts, and guided listening sessions under projected stars. It is the most terrified I have been since I left Minneapolis for the desert. Good sign. Astrology without armor I guide astrology workshops, which surprises people who think innocence means naivete. I know the math well enough. I also know clients need metaphor more than ephemeris tables at nine pm on a Thursday. Star mapping informs my readings. Not because every Leo needs a lecture on Arcturus, but

because looking up reminds querents they are inside a story larger than their inbox. Kabbalah and Theosophy live on my shelves beside camping manuals. I borrow language from all of them and try to return it cleaned. The goal is never to win debates. The goal is to help someone breathe. Closing Reflection You do not need expert credentials to belong under the sky. You need curiosity and a willingness to be wrong in public. If you are in Santa Fe and Wednesday feels heavy, message me. Bring a blanket. I will loan you the scratchy telescope and we will argue gently about whether that bright point is a star or a satellite. Until next time 🌙 — look up before the apps tell you what you are seeing. Your eyes deserve the first word.