No, this is not a paid promotional post about Twitter accounts you should follow (though I could suggest a few good ones if you're interested). My favorite 'tweeters' have nothing to do with the digital world whatsoever, aside from the fact that you might spot them sitting on a telephone line sometimes. Yes, I'm talking about birds, our fine feathered friends who fill the trees with song and the skies with flying bursts of color.
The cool thing about birds is that, like bunnies, they come in both wild and domestic varieties. Recently I've been really fascinated by budgies and parakeets, but I don't know if those really count as part of "nature" since they're usually kept as pets. Even so, they make for some really great memes:
The Beach Boys aside, I love wild birds just as much as pet birds. Out of wild birds, I'd have to say that chickadees are my favorites. They're literally just little puffballs with cute little beady eyes and cheerful little chirps. I would love to one day be able to feed a chickadee out of my hand, but for now I guess I'll have to just content myself with watching them at my mom's bird feeder when I'm at home (yes, the same feeder of tree pig extortion fame).
While I don't have a whole lot to say this week, birds are definitely an adorable, musical part of nature that anyone can easily enjoy by just looking out their window. As such, this week's challenge is to spot two different kinds of birds (bonus points if you can identify what species of bird they are). Keep your eyes on the skies, fellow observers, and I'll see you next Friday.
The best way to start this particular post would be with another simple statement:
I am in love with the stars.
Image of a globular star cluster taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
As far back as I can remember, I've always felt most at home when looking up at a nighttime sky full of stars. In the summer, I love standing outside until it gets dark, watching the fireflies (which I tend to call "little earth stars"), and waiting for the stars to come out. In the winter, I love bundling up, finding a hot drink, and standing outside in the snow while I look at the stars for awhile. For the past several years, whenever I get into an argument with my parents in the evening (which is, thankfully, quite a rare occurrence), I'll walk about a half of a block from our house to an empty, grassy lot from which I can happily, quietly watch the stars.
...Well, the lot is great for watching the stars, but only if you sit in a specific spot in the grass so that the giant floodlight from the nearby town co-op is mostly blocked by the branches of a tree.
And therein lies the problem.
Even within my tiny town of about 1100 people, most of the stars are blocked from view. While a quick ten-minute drive into the countryside can fix that (on a clear night, you can vividly see the Milky Way even just a few miles outside of town), it just goes to prove how light pollution really is an issue that effects every one of us. In larger cities like Sioux City, even fewer of the stars are visible. My own Morningside College used to be home to one of the largest telescopic observatories in Iowa, but the site where the observatory used to be is now just a greenspace, and has been since long before I got here. The issue that forced the observatory's closure and eventual demolition? Light pollution, of course. You can't use a telescope to look at the stars if even the telescope can no longer see them.
But despite all of this, light pollution is an issue that tends to be paid very little attention. Of course, that's understandable. The fact that 80 percent of North Americans can't see the Milky Way from where they live (see here for the science behind that claim) pales in comparison to some of the scarier issues plaguing our world. Even so, as I mentioned in my first post, when we lose touch with nature, we lose touch with part of our own human nature (and one of the better parts, at that). Besides that, light pollution can be quite harmful to both human and animal health as well (see here, here, here, and here for some studies showing the truth behind those claims too).
Photo of the Milky Way Galaxy taken by NASA
So why does there seem to be such little concern about light pollution? Well, first of all, like I said above, there are much bigger and more pressing things to be afraid of. Secondly, there's really not a super easy fix (though sky-friendly lighting does exist). A lot of our society is run through activities that happen at night, whether hospital, utility, or emergency-response work--and all of those occupations require adequate light to take place. Simply switching off the lights clearly isn't a solution.
But... what if it was, even if only for one night?
Something I've always dreamed of is the idea that the world (or the nation, or the state, or even just the county) might one day agree to an annual holiday where every single light that can possibly be safely doused (streetlights, house lights, headlights, phone lights, etc.) is switched off for the hours from dusk until about midnight. Can you imagine what that would look like, entire cities, maybe even entire countries going dark for a few hours? What it would look like to the astronauts in Earth's orbit on the ISS, who'd be able to look down at the dark side of the earth and have it actually be dark? To some, this very idea might seem frightening, but to me, it sounds incredible. No matter where you were, the universe around you would be crystal clear to see. Billions of stars would scatter the skies, the Milky Way would steal center stage, and even tiny little shooting stars would be so much more visible than on any other night.
It often seems like I'm not the only person who dreams of such a night. French photographer Thierry Cohen, for example, loves taking scenes of major cities' skylines and clear photos of starry skies from about the same latitude, and superimposing the two on top of each other. The results, as you can probably imagine, are truly breathtaking:
San Francisco skyline as it would look without light pollution, by Thierry Cohen
Maybe the concept of an annual holiday dedicated to the stars is a silly idea, and/or maybe I need to just plan on relocating to somewhere like Wyoming, where the skies are still often in clear view. But to me, losing the stars feels more like losing a giant, beautiful, diverse group of friends, and I don't want anyone else to have to lose them, either, whether now or in the future.
So much beautiful art has been inspired by the stars, as well, but rather than chattering your ear off about it, I'll just share a couple of my favorite examples with you, one a painting, and the other, one of my favorite animated shorts I've discovered during my years of traversing the interwebs:
Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
"Borrowed Light," an animated short film by Olivia Huynh
Like I said, maybe my dream of a night without artificial light is silly. Maybe the stars aren't all that important after all, at least not when compared with the many more-pressing issues out there. But to me, at least, the stars are my friends, and I'll always love spending an evening watching them from my tiny space on Earth below.
This week's challenge is to consciously take some time and look at the stars this week, even if only for just a couple of minutes. Dream big, fellow observers, and I'll see you next Friday.
At first glance, the topic for today's blog post may not seem as interesting as the two previous posts. After all, trees can't raid your garden or steal your birdseed. And assuming you're not a kid or teen, you probably haven't even attempted climbing a tree or hanging out in a treehouse anytime recently. (I'm included in that particular boat since I have never had any skill when it comes to climbing trees.) Even so, trees seem to have captured the artist's interest since time immemorial. From Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" (the poem from which this post takes its title) to the Biblical parable about faith the size of a mustard seed that can grow into a beautiful tree, it is clear that trees have been a staple of literature for an incredibly long time.
In today's era, trees are known to be precious for more than their visceral appeal. Trees act as natural smokestack scrubbers, cleaning the air around them by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing fresh oxygen in trade. In the United States, there are very few old growth forests (forests which have been around since before the colonial era) that remain (a notable exception is the Redwood Forest in California). In South America, the Amazon Rainforest, the largest rainforest on earth, has already had 20% of its trees cut down, and continues to be destroyed at the rate of 22,000 square miles per year. Given that 20 percent of the world's oxygen is produced by the Amazon, it seems like it might be well worth protecting.
Of course, the visceral appeal of trees shouldn't be discounted either. I've had few happier afternoons than ones spent sitting against the trunk of a tree in late spring or early summer, reading a book, writing a story, or even just watching the world around me for a little while. One of my favorite trees to sit by, a maple tree I called "Old Creaky," actually fell down a few years ago after a rough storm. Old Creaky wasn't really that old compared to some of the other trees in my family's yard, but after it was struck by lightning and split down the center of its trunk sometime before we moved into the house, it slowly started to lose its structural integrity. On the bright side, though, that crack down the middle caused it to creak quietly whenever the wind blew by. On a mildly breezy day, sitting under Old Creaky felt almost like trying to eavesdrop on a distant conversation, one where you could hear the voices but couldn't quite make out any of the words. I'd lean against its trunk, straining my ears to catch all the tiny groans and creaks, and wishing (as silly as it may sound) that I could speak the tree's language and know what it was trying to say.
I've never loved a specific tree as much as I loved Old Creaky, but I've always loved trees in general. They seem like nature's best-dressed citizens in some ways, from the way they sprout into greenery (and sometimes flowers) in the spring, and then trade the green for beautiful shades of yellow, orange, and red in the autumn. Even in the winter, at their most bare, they are beautiful when adorned with frost, snow, or a thin sheen of ice. In the end, I suppose I can only agree with Kilmer to express my awe for and appreciation of trees: "Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree."
This week's challenge is to try and listen to a tree for awhile. If you'd rather stay inside, that's fine (the weather outside around where I live has certainly been unfit for both men and beasts recently); just find a tree near a window and listen to the branches bump into the glass. Who knows? You, too, might just find yourself straining to understand a conversation that you know you can hear, but just can't quite make out the words.
P.S.: I apologize for my tardiness on this post. I completely forgot about it on Friday (oops), and by the time I remembered "Oh duh, I have a blog," I was already swung back into the business of the week and didn't have a spare moment to sit down and get writing. Starting this Friday, we should be back on a regular weekly posting schedule.
