DARK SKIES OVER HARMONY
I often think that the night is more alive and more richly
colored than the day. Vincent
Van Gogh
One of the wonderful things about
living in Harmony, Florida, is that the community is dark-sky compliant. We
like the fact that all street lights, porch lights, and other lamps in town are
hooded and pointed downward so that light pollution doesn't obstruct our view
of the stars at night.
It's a delightful experience to
take a late-hour walk in the neighborhood on a clear and moonless night.
Familiar constellations smile down like old friends and the Milky Way beams a
welcoming invitation to explore its gauzy pathway. There seems to be no limit
to the breadth and depth of the firmament above us.
I grew up, perhaps like many people
my age, taking dark skies for granted. On our farm in New Mexico we saw the
stars every night, and when we went camping, we literally slept under a blanket
of stars.
My most glorious memory of the
heavens happened while camping on a plateau at almost 12,000 feet above sea
level near Flint Lake in the Weminuche Wilderness in southwest Colorado. When
the sun went down and night settled in, the light of the stars became so
brilliant we could see everything around us clearly, even our own shadows on
the ground. With clear skies, rarified air, and no man-made lights within a
hundred miles, we could see tens of thousands more stars than were visible at
sea level. So incredibly beautiful!
In the modern world, nighttime
views of the cosmos are a fragile blessing. A majority of Americans today no
longer have an unobstructed and undiluted view of the heavens. In many places,
seeing more than a few stars is often impossible. In most of the world's large
urban centers, stargazing is something that only happens at a planetarium.
In fact, when a 1994 earthquake
knocked out the power in Los Angeles, many anxious residents called local emergency
centers to report seeing a strange "giant, silvery cloud" in the dark
sky. What they were really seeing - for the first time - was the Milky Way,
long obliterated by the urban sky glow. Even in Harmony, the bright glow of
Orlando, 20 miles to the northwest, blots out that sector of the nighttime sky
for us.
Does being able to see dark
skies really matter?
Can the ability to look up and see
the heavens make a difference in our lives? A number of scientific studies have
shown that the lack of nighttime darkness has serious effects on the health of
humans, animals, and plants. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627884/
But in terms of our lifestyles and
our sense of well-being, how are we affected? What is missing in our lives when
we can't - or don't - see the stars? Cartoonist Bill Watterson once posed an
interesting and thought-provoking question:
If people sat outside and
looked at the stars each night, would they live a lot differently?
How might it change us and the way
we experience life if, instead of spending our evenings looking at television
sets, computer screens, and bright city lights, we could view Orion, the Big
Dipper, the North Star, and the Milky Way?
Would we see our place in the
universe in a different way if our nightly view included thousands and millions
of stars and planets, and we took the time to contemplate the implications of
the vastness of the universe we live in?
How would our perspective on the
cycle of life and our role in it be affected by paying attention to the giant
kaleidoscope of the heavens, spinning constantly, season by season?
Does being able to see dark
skies really matter?
I cannot speak for others, but I
know that for myself, seeing the stars on a moonless night gives me a sense of
both being grounded and being part of something infinite - as indeed I am.
Immersing myself in the real world by gazing into a canopy of heaven's light is
far more exhilarating than any virtual or electronic world I might pretend to
be a part of.
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