Americans disgruntled by the Trump presidency seem to account for increased website traffic on Canada or New Zealand as possible places to move to. And a recent poll showed that a third of Californians would vote for the state to leave the union!
We have our local Trump, Europe has a number of little Trumps excitedly flapping their fascist wings to make it to the top of their governments — there‘ll likely be more people echoing Dylan Thomas’ I have longed to move away, From the hissing of the spent lie….
Over 200 year earlier, Wordsworth‘s frustration and anger with the way England was going was the context for “The world is too much with us“ where he turned to contemplation of the sea for “glimpses that would make me less forlorn.“
Here‘s another way to escape a messy world, urged by astronomers: the mind-expanding contemplation of the universe through the rediscovery of the night sky.
An experience all but lost to urban populations, it is not mere escape or a view of awesome beauty, it re-connects us to the universe that we forget we‘re part of, and puts us in our place as merely one accidental form of life in the vastness of space.
For the world‘s first astronomers, the aboriginal peoples of Australia, their observations of the stars and sky formed the basic elements of their social beliefs and practices, deepened their knowledge of flora and fauna, their access to food supply, determined their nomadic movements.
An Irish woman who lived among them for 40 years noted their need to see the night sky that she came to share: “I lay on my back and stared at the stars until I seemed to be out there with them in the darkness. The sky was breathing; I could feel the cavity of the night expanding and contracting around me as if I was in the belly of the: universe.” For most people, a lost or never-known experience.
In modern cities today, it is becoming impossible to truly see the night sky because of the glare and interference caused by the relentless increase of artificial light.
There are other concerns too: increased energy consumption contributing to climate change, threats to biodiversity because the disorientation of nocturnal animals and insects, of bats and migratory birds can affect their survival. Human health can be impacted too by the disruption of the circadian rhythm.
Fortunately, awareness that light pollution is harmful is eliciting responses, for example, the Swiss Society of Engineers & Architects set a policy in 2013 by to avoid “unnecessary light emission in outdoor spaces.“
Star-gazing has growing appeal. In some countries, people can head for Dark Sky Parks, oases of darkness certified by the International Dark Sky Association. Where over urban areas merely a few dozen stars are visible, in pitch darkness, the stunning sight of the Milky Way, the galaxy that contains our solar system, can be seen by the naked eye. That there are between 100 and 400 billion stars in this galaxy alone, some nearly as old as the universe itself, provides perspective.
Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow wrote a scene in the Mount Palomar observatory: “Here the living heavens looked as if they could take you in…through the distortions of the atmosphere, you saw objects, forms, partial realities. The rest was to be felt. And it wasn‘t only that you felt, but that you were drawn to feel and to penetrate further, as if you were being informed that what was spread over you had to do with your existence, down to the very blood and the crystal forms inside your bones.”
There are wonders to experience in the night sky, the least being a reminder that Trump and his ilk are mere nasty blips in the fact of the universe.
Author’s email: h.cecilia7@gmail.com
