A classic science fiction story (“Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov) was set on a planet in the midst of a globular cluster, its sky ablaze with six suns that prevent true night from ever falling. Once every 2000 years or so, a previously unseen moon eclipses the only sun in the sky at that time, revealing a dark sky full of stars, far richer than our own. In the story’s telling, it drives people mad, and the planetary civilization collapses.
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Nightfall’s epigraph is this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!
His story, of course, draws a different conclusion.
With the end of Daylight Saving Time and the ever shorter hours of daylight as we approach the winter solstice, I hear many complaints about dark and early sunsets. Set aside our silly tinkering with clock times—at any given latitude the hours of daylight and night are givens for any particular day on the calendar.
So many of us are cut off from nature, surrounded by concrete, manicured lawns, and far more lights than are necessary to provide “security.” Too many people have never seen the Milky Way in all its splendor under a truly dark sky.
A clear dark sky is a glorious sight. It is humbling without making one feel insignificant. Yes, I’m just a speck in a vast universe. But the three pounds of matter in my skull make up the most complex structure of which we are aware in all this vastness. It is capable of understanding that those pinpricks of light are nuclear furnaces at unimaginable distances, lighting the skies of planets that are not our own.
I don’t hate the darkness. I love the stars.
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