Man on the Moon

My father owned a cabin in the remote Salish Mountains of Northwestern Montana.  The cabin sat in a deep forest between steep mountains.  On the night of July 20, 1969, my father and I stepped outside of the cabin, walked out into an open place in front, and looked up at the moon, which floated amongst some tall tamaracks high above.

I was thirteen at that time.

On that night Neil Armstrong, commander of the Apollo 11 mission, became the first man to step on the surface of the moon.  That is why we stood there, looking up.  In a gesture that marked the humility of this great man, the first thing Neil Armstrong did, when he landed on the moon, was to leave a patch in commemoration of all the NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action.

That steely moon now touched by man.

Over this last weekend, Neil Armstrong died while surrounded by his family.

His footprints remain untouched on the face of the moon today and may remain so for the next ten-thousand years.

--Mitchell Hegman