That earthly places—rainforests, wetlands, prairies—are disappearing is commonly bemoaned, but the sky is disappearing too. Ecologically speaking, the ozone layer is thinning, and so we are losing our atmospheric protection from the cosmos; but aesthetically speaking, thicker and thicker layers of humanly produced stuff intervene between us and that cosmos. We spend more and more time under roofs and surrounded by walls, whether in cars or buildings, and less and less time in night’s true darkness, unmitigated by artificial light. The light pollution generated by cities makes it hard to see more than a few of the brightest stars in many places, and smog taints the colors of the sky by day (and gives Los Angeles its blood-red sunsets). In a national park last summer, I heard an astronomer who was pointing out the constellations assert that the sky is the most important place to save, because it is available to everyone, visible to prisoners and urbanites as well as outdoorspeople. Who looks at it nowadays? A century and a half ago, John Ruskin wrote, “It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky”—strange because the sky is ubiquitous.
Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes as Politics
(Source: creamcheesefrosting, via sa2ha)
