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Back to the Forum Archives Last night I was out on my deck just looking at the stars. So what? The so what is, I could not see many of the ones I know are there. It was not clouds, but coincident light that obscured them. I live about halfway between Flint, Michigan and Pontiac, Michigan. Over both of these cities is a huge upward inverse pyramid of light being urinated away into the heavens. The result is, I could not see any of the stars that were within 30 degrees of the horizon to the north or to the south. It made me kind of crotchety. I know that energy waste is not unique to the above mentioned cities. It is true of ever city in the world and pretty much all of the towns and villages. Have you ever seen total darkness? That is, of course, a trick question. You cannot see darkness because it is the total lack of light of any kind. That is why what we see is black. The little rods and cones of the eyes are receiving no light stimulation at all. The correct question is, have you ever been in total darkness? I have, but I only managed it twice in my life. Once was relatively recently in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. That was easy. They just got us down there and turned the lights off. The darkness was total. I could touch my nose with my finger but I could not see the finger or the hand it was attached to. My other experience happened when I was just a kid visiting some family friends who lived on Thunder Bay of Lake Huron, in Michigan. That was many years ago. I was walking mindlessly on a country road when the sun went down. I mean it went down like a rock over a cliff. I did not notice until then that the sky was overcast. That was my first experience with total darkness where there was no coincident light at all. There was no moon or stars or any light that I could see. If I had not been so scared I might have enjoyed the experience. As it was, I was walking on the road and I only had two clues for orientation. First, the road I was walking on had deep forest on both sides. Now, believe it or not, I could not see the trees, but I could feel their presence. I felt them as large masses on both sides with an open corridor between them. The other clue I had was the gentle curvature of the road bed which allowed for water runoff to both sides. I could really feel that. I just stayed exactly on that center hump and put one foot ahead of the other until, after about an hour, I finally saw the light shining through a window of my host's house. I breathed a deep sigh of relief then put on a bold front of nonchalance as I went in. I really do not need darkness quite that absolute, but I would like to see the stars again. I have had a number of incidents of near total darkness. This is the situation where the light is from stars or is weak coincident light, such as one lamp in a house. One of the things I loved about Lake Huron was this situation of near total darkness which occurred every night. For a time, we owned a small property with a small cottage on Hammond Bay near Rogers City. There were many particular pleasures associated with that, but two stand out. One was the outstanding opportunity to see the stars. In this particular situation the sky appeared as pure black velvet with the stars spread out on it like millions of tiny diamond studs of various sizes. It looked much like the world's largest jewelers display. I could lie on my back on the beach and gaze at the heavenly display for hours. Whatever it does for others, it mattered not one whit to me that I could name only a few of the stars and constellations. The pleasure came from the pure beauty of it. The other particular pleasure I recall was the full moonrise over Lake Huron. This too required near total darkness to have its magical effect. We were well situated where we could sit on the beach and observe the moonrise. If no one has previously told you, I can tell you that Lake Huron is huge. What we see from the shore is not an opposite shore, but an unending expanse of water which drops off at the horizon. Like the oceans, this is one place where we can actually see the curvature of the earth. We can see the horizon as a giant arc where the water drops off and the sky begins. Hence, when the moon rises, it rises up out of the water slowly and majestically like some proud god of the night. If there are low lying clouds on the water, the moon will have flaming wings on both sides as though it were soaring. One could almost imagine the Phoenix rising from the ashes. As the moon climbs into the sky the wings disappear and we see only a huge golden ball. Then the magic begins. The moon lays a beam downward and spreads a golden bridge over the water. It begins at the moon ad comes directly to us on the shore, ending right at our feet. It says to us, "Come if you dare. Come into the world of magic. Walk on my bridge." Now the other experience of near total darkness was not so pleasant. It was in Korea during that damned so called Korean Conflict. Just for the record, for the guys over there, it was not a simple conflict. It was a God damned horrible deadly bloody miserable war. In this situation, lights out at night in the war zone was mandatory. Courts-martial and worse could result from carelessness. What's worse? Sniper fire. With lights out, the only coincident light was from heavenly bodies and artillery flashes in the distance. As a result, when I was not hiding in a bunker or under a tank, I did get in some star gazing. It was just as beautiful there as it was here. Isn't it strange how the heavenly bodies shine equally bright on all parts of the earth. No one is singled out. No one is special. Sometimes we single ourselves out by creating so much coincident light that we miss the beauty of the sky. I don't know if we fear the dark so much or if we are just that stupid. What I do notice, especially in times of a critical energy shortage, is how much energy we just urinate away to light up nothing in particular. When I was younger there was WWII and we had things like blackouts. Everyone was required to turn their lights out at night to thwart the enemies of democracy, so we were told. There was a popular song at the time. I'm not sure of the name, but the first phrase is fixed in my mind "When the lights come on again all over the world." Maybe we should try going the other way for a while. Maybe we could have lightless Tuesdays or something like that. Maybe we could see how remarkable total darkness is and how beautiful the stars are. Okay! It's just a dream.
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