Large Fierce Mammal

Screen capture from “Kejimkujik National Park – Milky Way over Jeremy’s Bay – Timelapse” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njeKhWPzd8M)

In the early morning hours of 17 January 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake and subsequent aftershocks knocked out power to much of the city of Los Angeles, California, plunging at nightfall some of the most light polluted portions of the globe into a deeper darkness than most of its denizens had ever known existed.

Named the Northridge earthquake, the event is recorded as having killed 57 people, injuring 8700, and for many among the surviving urban population, marked the first time they had ever seen the unveiled night sky in all its glory.

Legend has it that in the darkness, people called 911 to report a mysterious glowing cloud overlaying the city. Still other tales report that those calls were directed, instead, to observatories, but examining events that occurred before the internet through the lens of bullshit that actually IS the internet, my money’s on 911 before anyone using a directory in the dark so they could use a telephone connected to damaged infrastructure to call facilities most wouldn’t even know existed and that probably wouldn’t answer anyway (Astronomers do their best work in the dark), about something observed that mattered enough to them to even call anyone.

Whatever happened, we unquestionably live in a world in which most of humanity has lost touch with the True glory of the Heavens, along with much else. If the Biblical Christmas story had unfolded today, it’s likely the star would have gone unnoticed.

For today’s Long Winter’s Night, we’ll present three beauteous portrayals of what lies beyond Human pretensions. The first, from National Geographic, is titled Lose Yourself in the Night Sky, advice I can unreservedly endorse.

Next is composed of time lapse imagery captured during the Dark Sky Weekend of August 2016 in the dark sky preserve of Kejimkujik National Park. In our backyard for us LFM’s, here’s some holiness for ya.

Lastly, and also from Nova Scotia, is a tribute to the dark skies overlying the community of Quinan. Courtesy of Tim Doucette from Deep Sky Eye Observatory.

Winter is but one of Nature’s complexions Goode Reader, and in this She gifts us Her darkness withal. Find it. Embrace it. Let it fill you.