I received Paul Bogard’s latest book, The End of Night, just a few days before the closing of my new place on 30 acres in rural Oklahoma. One of the features I was looking for was dark sky as I searched for a place to call home. I am fortunate to have been raised under glorious starry skies in northwestern Oklahoma and in the northern Ozarks, and I still look for dark night and brilliant stars everywhere I travel. It is an old habit that conjures many wonderful memories, but one that also causes frustration. As Bogard’s book so forcefully demonstrates, there are fewer and fewer night skies available to us. Light pollution is a real problem. The end of night is not merely dramatic license. Even my little spread, 3 miles from a “town” of a couple hundred people (really just a four-way stop with two convenient stores) is not as dark as it once was, as it should be. Ambient light from something somewhere on the horizon delays the best star gazing until very late in the night, and even then, the artificial glow no doubt interrupts some of the potential natural radiance. As I was transferring the electricity account into my name, I was asked if I wanted the security lights to remain on – for $30 bucks/month. I said no. Turn them off. I had just finished reading Paul’s book, and I was full of celestial awareness. Frustratingly, one security light remained aglow for the first two weeks after I had moved in, after I had requested the lights to be turned off. The one light itself was so bright that it literally blocked the night sky. I was disheartened. One reason I had moved out here was to see the stars, but the light from the backyard was so bright it actually glowed through the windows, penetrated the curtains and seeped around the cracks interrupting my sleep. Ironically, it was darker on my previous street in a town of 20,000 people. Thankfully, after two weeks, the security light is gone. I guess I’m less secure, but the night radiance is now a regular mystical occurrence. I can see the starry nights that mean so much to me.
Of course Paul Bogard’s book is not merely about left-over romantics wanting to look heavenward at the expense of progress. It is startling, nevertheless, to consider that “two-thirds of the world’s population – including 99 percent of people living in the continental United States and western Europe – no longer experience a truly dark night, night untouched by artificial electric light (25). His very important book shows us the many areas that are affected by the loss of darkness, including many issues concerning the health and wellness of humans, bird and animal life, wasted energy, even faulty notions of security. The loss of natural dark sky, concomitantly linked to the intrusion of unnecessary artificial light is sadly akin to the newly coined term solastalgia – “missing a a loved place that still exists but to which toe old birds and plants and animals no longer come … a yearning for a place you still inhabit rather than one you’ve left behind” (179). Are we not merely diminishing the very soul of our existence by our ignorant reliance on unnecessary lighting? Bogard’s holistic research, thoughtfully and elegantly communicated in a convincing manner, suggests the unfortunate answer to my question.
Understandably the most important consideration regarding the overuse of artificial light concerns human safety. We assume that “because some light improves our safety, more light will improve our safety more” (67). This non sequitur governs so much of our thinking about lighting the night, but much of our night lighting only gives us the “illusion of safety” (87). Bogard’s investigation argues that “everything doesn’t necessarily have to be lit. On the contrary, it’s when you leave things in shadows that you see the light better” (qtd 62). In fact: “the human eye has an amazing ability to adapt to different lighting levels, including levels we normally think of as quite dim” (71).
His writing style is very engaging. He masterfully weaves various threads in this book-length example of the creative nonfiction genre. At times, his words flow in the tradition of American nature writing, some of the earliest writing that concerned the value of Earth. Consider this lovely extended passage:
The canoe gleams – I could read in this light. I’m glad to have my Twins cap, pulling it down to shield my eyes as I paddle to the middle of the lake. Perseus emerges over the horizon, the Summer Triangle overhead. Lying back, I let the canoe rotate away from the moon. A splash startles me, a fish for sure. Then silent and still again. As I drift over the sandbar something scrapes the bottom of the canoe. “Weeeeeeds!” we would cry as kids. A freaky sound, and I nudge the canoe into deeper water. Everything very quiet, very still … From shore, the barred owl’s hoo-hoo, hoo-hoooo, in the water, frog songs and fish jumps. The lake pulses with life. I hear bubbles that have risen from bottom weeds burst, imagine walleyes and northern cruising beneath the canoe. A loon calls … there is so much unknown in the lake’s wild night. The way owls hunt and fly without sound in the dark. The way wolves drift through the woods like smoke, evaporating at the first hint of morning light … I sit listening … two owls going back and forth behind me … [then] with two strokes I turn the canoe toward shore and set the paddle down. Two strokes as quietly as I can, and the owls stop. They hear me, back in the woods on their branches in moonlight (134-135)
In addition to lyrical passages such as this, Bogard relies on his observations from multiple trips to significant places in North America and around the world, mixed with academic research as well as interviews of everyday human subjects. The result is personal, conversational yet informed and persuasive. A thoughtful and respected voice in eco-criticism, Bogard’s work achieves the ideals of that literary/philosophical movement by relying on science, history (the history of light is far more interesting than one might expect) and other disciplines, blending them into a personal compelling response. The tone of the work is especially pleasing – inspirational though earnest. not overtly depressing as discussions based in ecology can be. In fact with some humility and common sense, we can do much to prevent light pollution, and Bogard’s writing is a necessary reminder of why the issue is so important to us all (In 2008 Paul edited a lovely volume of scientific and personal essays, Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark, Reno: Nevada UP). I especially respect the honesty with which he addresses such a broad topic. He does not carelessly call for a stone-age end of light: “The hope is for a different style of progress” (206). If nothing else moves us, then practical considerations linking wasted money to unnecessary lighting ought to concern us: “It’s estimated that the European Union spends some 1.7 billion euros a year on wasted outdoor light. In the United States, the figure is a similar $2.2 billion” (228). Bogard argues for a responsible, manageable understanding of how light works, and more important, how it does not work – despite our assumptions to the contrary. Even more important, he calls for an understanding of darkness, without which most of the life we have inherited will be radically and negatively affected.
The End of Night reminds us that we need to rediscover what we have always found mystifying, to revive our wonder and our certain, accountable, place beneath an incomprehensible sky:
in these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the “shooting” showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, Earth’s own beauty more incredible. If indeed the numbers and distances of the night sky are so large that they become nearly meaningless, then let us find the meaning under our feet. There is no other place to go, the night sky makes this clear. So let us go dark. (13)
I encourage everyone to read Paul Bogard’s writing. I encourage everyone to turn off some lights. Now, I need to follow my own advice – go see some stars.
reviewed by Ken Hada, northwest of Ada, Oklahoma
Paul Bogard. The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2013. ISBN 978-0-316-18290-4.