Finding Darkness
A funny thing has happened to us on this journey... we rediscovered darkness. Living in an urban area for as long as we did, we had almost no awareness that it was never truly dark. Light pollution is a growing problem in the industrial world, where 3/4 of the population never experiences true night. We were among that group and had no idea what we were missing.
We started thinking about this as we were camped in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area a scant few miles out of Las Vegas. We've lived in the dark, experiencing stars and moonlight for over four months, but as night fell in the RRC the hills and sky still glowed with the lights of the city. The beam from atop the Luxor was clearly visible but there were no stars to be found.
Las Vegas in NASA photographs is the brightest pixel in the world! Though in camp we may have been surrounded by the Mojave Desert with its Joshua trees and sage, we were most certainly back in the urban world of perpetual light.
Night connects us to the natural world and its rhythms. Without stars, without the land glowing on a full moon night, we lose much: awe, wonder, peace, and a sense of place in the larger universe.
You may wonder what does it matter, it's just a streetlight here and a neon sign there, but an absence of dark has been closely tied to a whole host of health problems, from sleep disorders to cancer to obesity and the research has only just begun. We as a species evolved for millennia experiencing night and day, but it is only within the last century that we have been able to forestall nightfall. A century is but a mere blip on the human evolutionary timescale so it is no wonder that we as a species are struggling with the light. And its not just us, myriad plant and animal species rely on the dark for feeding, camouflage, and reproduction.
There is hope though. There are towns that have taken steps to return to night. Borrego Springs in California dims all its lights each night so as not to pollute the sky of the neighboring state park. National Parks employ individuals who chronicle light pollution in the parks in an attempt to mitigate it. The International Dark-Sky Association works with communities and parks around the world to bring back night.
We now have a much greater awareness. As the darkness closes in on us each night and we begin to wind down, we use the Minnie’s external artificial light sparingly, mostly to avoid scorpions and rattlesnakes as we put things away after sunset. We find we sleep better in the dark and we now hold fast to a clock more normal for humans, going to bed early in the evening and rising with the sun.
Though we can name only a few constellations, that doesn't stop us from standing outside the Minnie on moonless nights with our heads craned back in awe at the bands of the Milky Way stretched above us. We notice small things like shooting stars and the crescent moon hanging low on the hills in the middle of the night. Far from being afraid, we are held by the universe.
The light of modern society was fine for a week—we got to spend time with dear friends, meet their darling new baby, do laundry and run the zillion errands we’d avoided for weeks. Last night though found us back in the dark and we were grateful for it. We made camp in the Mojave National Preserve and watched the stars slowly come out. The mountains here block out most of the light so we could see the Milky Way once again, but also, astonishingly, Vegas’ glow in the northeastern sky one hundred miles away.
