Excerpt from an essay about lecturing at a summer school in Puerto Rico and visiting Arecibo.

Pulling up out of the lowlands, on the winding drive into the mountains, a pearly-white tower pointed skyward, punctuating the verdant, lush jungle.  Then, as you continued closer, a second distant tower appeared, then small satellite dishes, and buildings perched along a ridge, all of which were the sole non-greenery since turning off the highway three miles earlier.  I arrived amongst a few other cars in the parking lot, in front of the still firmly closed entrance gate and tall, solid metal wall made more inviting by the banners acknowledging funding support and a broad planetary and galactic mural welcoming you to Arecibo Observatory.  At 10:00 am, the gate creaked open and the guard motioned to the few of us standing around that we could enter the site.  This access road leads you on for another quarter mile through more jungle, purposefully isolating the telescope as best as possible from all of the stray electromagnetic fields that carelessly emanate from car radios or pocket cell phones.  It seemed that every few steps there was sign pock-marked with rust-colored lichen bearing the no symbol over a drawing of an artifact from the ‘80s stating “Prohibido El Uso Del Celular.”  As the first to reach the visitor center and the observation platform, the view, isolated and alone, was like I was opening a present wrapped exclusively for me today, on my birthday.

The first thing I noticed about Arecibo wasn’t its size.  Though that was astoundingly impressive at 1,000 feet across, completely covering a 20 acre limestone sinkhole in the mountains, with three 300 foot towers supporting high-tension cables from which a catwalk and the receiver are suspended.  Neither was its technological precision, with 38,000 panels arranged in a spherical cap to reflect electromagnetic waves in the radio band originating from directly above onto the receiver, and then ultimately onto computers to be analyzed.  The first thing I noticed was that it looked tired, like an ancient, scarred warrior who was finally stumbling and pawing, losing their first battle against that enemy that always ultimately wins.  Decades of rains had leached rust from the rails along which the receiver moved, and a dark streak stained its white housing where the water had streamed and dripped down to the dish.  The visitor center building was relatively new, but the paint on the railing of the observation deck was chipped, exposing the bare metal underneath to the elements.  Hurricane Maria had ripped off the light grey surfacing of about a third of the aluminum panels, which I knew had no effect on the reflectivity of the telescope, but sobered my enthusiasm and excitement with a dose of realism. Though we believe that Arecibo has broadened and deepened our view of those timeless questions, it itself cannot escape the slow, ever-tightening, strangling grip of time.