By Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright

Just what is an Occultation of Venus?  About once every eight years, the path of our sister planet intersects the slightly tilting path of our moon.  Early in the morning of April 19, 1993, Prescott sky-watchers saw the moon move closer and closer to the bright disk of Venus until it disappeared as if the moon had suddenly swallowed it whole.  About 80 minutes later the watchers were rewarded by the reappearance of Venus on the other side of the moon.  And all was right with the world. 
 

One hundred years ago, when Sharlot Hall, poet and founder of Sharlot Hall Museum, learned of a forthcoming occultation of the planet Venus, she went down to Congress, the other side of Yarnell, AZ, for a good spot to view it. 
 

How did she know it was going to happen?  Looking at the PRESCOTT WEEKLY COURIER for March of 1899, we find that the war in Cuba, the rumors of the Pope's illness, and cases of smallpox in the Salt River Valley were big news stories.  But no word of Venus. 
 

The railroad to Congress had been completed just three years before so we can picture a 28 year-old Sharlot alighting from the train, her skirt reaching to her ankles, her long, brown hair drawn back with loose tendrils framing her pretty face, a soft traveling bag swinging from one arm and a large hamper-basket in the other.  Always generous, she surely must have brought treasures from Orchard Ranch: apples, which had been wrapped and stored the fall before, now mellow and flavorful, and her own canned peaches and applesauce. 
 

In the 1924, edition of Sharlot's book of poetry, CACTUS AND PINE, a long note precedes her poem, The Occultation of Venus.  She wrote, "In March 1899, I saw the occultation of Venus and the moon from the high hill behind the old mining camp of Congress.  It was about three o'clock in the morning when we climbed the hill to wait, wrapped in Indian blankets for the wind was cold down off the northern ranges.  The sky was inky blue with stars like needle points; the desert below was a sea of black shadow, with a few lights in the town where others were getting up to see the star and moon meet." 
 

At that time the highly productive gold mine and mill at Congress were working night and day.  "The beat of the huge stamps in the mill shook the air and seemed to make the stars quiver and twinkle," she wrote. 
 

A group of Yavapais camped down in the canyon sang as they waited, "...for someone had told them that the moon would eat the big white star."  When the star disappeared they could be heard... "wailing their wild death songs, and when, after what seemed a long time, the star shone out on the other side of the moon, they shouted and fired their guns in rejoicing." 
 

Our brilliant Morning Star and also our dazzling Evening Star, Venus appears brighter to us than any other heavenly body except our sun and moon.  Sharlot called it "A jeweled crown for an old man's brow."  She pictured the earth as a crusty old man, gray and wind-parched, yearning for tenderness.  Then harking back to the love goddess of ancient Rome, she wrote: 

"The late moon rose in the dawn-touched east, 
And close beside white Venus shone, 
As once she shone on shrine and priest." 
The poem ends in the spirit of renewal: 
"Then the old land bloomed with a sudden youth 
In the tender fire of the morning glow." 
 

Years ago an occultation of a planet gave astronomers an opportunity to study its size and position.  Now, like a woman in a doctor's office, Venus has her temperature taken, is 
x-rayed, radared, photographed, measured and probed.  Modern science has gotten to know her quite well, thank you . But when she acts up, she still holds the same kind of awe-inspiring attraction she did years ago.  Like an eclipse of the sun or the appearance of a comet, a view of the bright disk of a planet suddenly disappearing fills us with an altered sense of place.  An impression of our minute location in a boundless universe.  An awareness of our importance...and our un-importance. 

Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright, Retired Librarian from Yavapai College, is active in Prescott Art Docents and Sharlot Hall Museum.  She enjoys investigating the historic confluences of the arts and sciences.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (citn299p). Reuse only by permission.
The Occultation of Venus, when the moon blocks our view of Venus, was observed by Sharlot Hall in 1899.  This group of people near Congress may have been preparing to view the same celestial event.