In my letter dated May 1, 2004 –Entry into the EU & Stephen King– I wrote:
“We have to travel to the Elqui Valley one golden day and its starry night to be blessed again, to heal all your wounds, and for protecting us from future suffering. We will renew our intimate liturgy in the nature. We should spend one more night in Vicuña –the town in the heart of the Valley– for staying in the Hostería to fix our failure in the summer 1999, and to spend some days by the sea in Andalué (Guanaqueros). I have delightful remembrances from our journey by the coast the past year in a sunny winter day of August, when in Rocas de Santo Domingo we had the Stephen King approach to that solitary and weird restaurant on the cliffs at the seaside. Do you remember? Was it a happy day for you too? I have the special wish for us to take the tour to the Mamalluca Astronomical Observatory in Vicuña to watch the heavens in the middle of the night and to enjoy the Milky Way by naked eye. I want to hug you in the starry wind once more!”
But we did not return to the Elqui Valley. It remained my intimate desire postponed for eternity when we reunite with Stella Maris again.
However, on December 28, 2006, at the beginning of summer, I returned to the Elqui Valley in a nostalgic and solitary journey. It was not the liturgy for renewing our vows but my personal farewell and prayer revering the star that was personified in my lifetime, my brightest lucero, Sirius and Stella Maris altogether. The weather was wonderful in the Valley and I stayed overnight in the fine hotel and resort Hostería de Vicuña, fixing so my unaccomplished desire from February 1999.
Late in the evening I went up to the Mamalluca Astronomical Observatory, located on one of the cerros that surround the Valley. In the open air there were field telescopes and the big one was in the Observatory’s Dome in a fancy building.
At midnight, after a lecture on the Zodiac in the auditorium, I watched the heavens through the telescopes and also by naked eye advised by astronomers. It was great spiritual experience, which concentrated my childhood desires learning Ancient History on Assyrians and Egyptians, and my youth longing studying Cosmology in my university years, and later reading about Astronomy and mathematical and physical sciences.
Infinitude, immensity, complexity and beauty of the Universe have always let me in ecstasy and profoundly meditative; the essence of it –space-time, mass, matter, light, gravity, emptiness, and Mathematics– constitute the Divinity, if any. I watched through a field telescope the intensely white-blue star Sirius, which is 23 times brighter than our Sun and has twice its mass (it is a 2-star system).
It was majestic experience seeing it, and also watching the red giant star Betelgeuse nearby, which appeared through the telescope spectacularly big and reddish.
Through the big Dome’s telescope I watched the cluster of the Pleiades. Only a few stars can difficulty be seen by naked eye in that region of the space, but suddenly the telescope revealed hundreds of sparkling stars forming the cluster, making it so vividly that seemed a miracle.
The Three Maries –in the Constellation of Orion– constitute grand gift for the mortals. I watched them at Mamalluca in their glorious splendor outshining the crystal sky of the Valley. They accompanied our love all along Chile during many adventurous and blissful nights. Only the resplendent Southern Cross was missing due to the time it was, but in my heart it was shining as the celestial jewel that united us intimately on Earth, and which we watched with emotion in so many idyllic nights along Chile.
