posted 12-08-2012 02:08 PM            

The passage of time has rounded the sharp edges of some details. But on certain nights, Maj. Gen. William A. Anders, USAF, Ret., stands outside his Orcas Island home, gazes across the ink-black night sky over San Juan Channel and feels a brilliant new moon pull his mind all the way back into its orbit.

When you are one of the first three of your species to leave your planet and travel to another, certain things tend to stick with you, even a half-century later. For Anders, the brightest highlights of his historic flight on Apollo 8, from the Earth to the moon, 44 years ago this month, are more vivid than the most recent mooring of his boat, Apogee, at Deer Harbor.

It's what happens when you cast the first human eyes on the pockmarked back side of the moon. Or see the Earth from farther away in space than anyone before and capture its fragility in a photograph that alters forever the way Earthlings view their own planet.

"My mind is getting fuzzier," Anders, 79 going on 59, says with a chuckle. "But various things stick. Particularly when I look over here at this horizon and I see that it's a very new moon. You get a little hair standing up on the back of your neck. Because that's the way it was when we went there."