GRAFTON — On our sparsely populated three-mile stretch of rural dirt road, the bright cobra light hovering on top of a 30-foot pole is a glaring illustration of “incongruous.”
Every first-time guest arriving at my house after dark asks the same question: “What's up with that street light?”
“It depends on whom you ask,” I reply.
Road rumors are rampant because, outside of a newsroom, why should anyone bother with facts?
Some people claim the town installed the light when a security-conscious buyer purchased the 100 acres across the road and wanted to light the entrance to his driveway.
More imaginative gossips insist there was a bribe involved. Others argue that the new owner had it erected at his own expense.
Joking about the light is good sport amongst us.
“That light simply isn't in keeping with the neighborhood,” we snipe, as if we lived in an development of “exclusive executive homes,” and were bemoaning a rusty 1967 VW bus spray-painted with faded psychedelic swirls and peace signs, and permanently parked in a renegade neighbor's driveway.
Several years back, the light was shot out by an unknown perpetrator. For a few months before it was repaired, residents celebrated a return to the dark.
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The most spectacular display of profligate lighting I've ever seen was in Maryland, on what had been a working farm until new owners migrated from Baltimore and built an American architect's tarted-up facsimile of a stone historic English manor house. It rivaled a Wal-Mart for square footage. Sited on a knoll above the barn and original farmhouse, its copper roof could be seen from half a mile away, blotting out a significant portion of hills and sky.
Most of the 70 acres were lit up like a penitentiary. Turning off the road, visitors stopped at an imposing iron gate and pressed the call button on the security box to be admitted.
The gate was hung between two stone pillars topped by “decorative” lights. When the gate swung open, drivers proceeded along a lane flanked by up-lit cherry trees. Young oaks, also up-lit, surrounded the house.
Glowing sconces stood sentinel at the front door - a door so wide that two horses could have galloped through it abreast. Floodlights blazed in the eaves outside every upstairs window.
At the back of the house, more floodlights and the beady red eye of a security camera oversaw a parking area. Every outdoor light automatically switched on at dusk and stayed on until dawn.
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“Lit” is sometimes used as a euphemism for “drunk.” When I look at satellite images of Europe, Japan, and most of the USA, I think there's too much drinking going on.
Many Americans are all lit up with what Walt Whitman called “the mania of owning things.” We can buy a piece of land and call it our “property,” but we can't own the sky.
Even so, eradicating the night is a symptom of our mania.
Lights supposedly enhance the aesthetics of a place and provide security. What they really do is broadcast the message, “We have money! Valuable possessions inside!”
This kind of choice doesn't make any sense to me. If I owned a mountain of stuff I thought I couldn't bear to lose, I wouldn't advertise it. As for aesthetics, what human can improve on the beauty and wonder of a starry night?
We're not just drunk. We're suffering from a collective case of terminal hubris.
I was house-sitting on that farm one winter when I picked up a National Geographic on the library table and read Verlyn Klinkenborg's article “Our Vanishing Night.”
“In a very real sense,” he wrote, “light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way - the edge of our galaxy - arching overhead.”
I savored those words as I lolled on the couch with all the heavy, brocade drapes drawn so as not to be blinded by the lights outside. Night wasn't merely vanishing there; it had been vanquished. Hermetically sealed away from earth and sky, I felt lost and terribly lonely.
Where was my “true place in the universe?” I longed for my home, where night always enters through naked windows. I yearned for the steep, winding path that leads from my house to the barn.
There, even when clouds obscure the moon and stars, I walk without a flashlight. Pausing for a minute on the porch, my eyes adjust to the dark, and then the contours of the path invite me down the hill. The path says, “You belong to me.”
I walk slowly, with an acute awareness of how my feet connect with the ground. It calls me to remember “the scale of my being” and my status as a guest on this earth.
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It's sobering to learn that lighting accounts for one quarter of world energy usage, most of it generated by the burning of fossil fuels.
According to the International Dark-Sky Association, Americans spend $2.2 billion a year on lighting. Other sources report much higher figures.
However they're counted, the numbers add up to a big chunk of change that could surely be diverted to more useful purposes.
As we wrestle with our national debt and fret about the burden we're imposing on our descendants, we might consider that some debts are deeper than money.
“Over one half of Americans can't see the Milky Way from their own homes,” the IDA reports. How will we answer when future generations ask us why the Milky Way went missing?
In addition to wasting energy and money, a lit-up planet threatens ecosystems and migration, screws up our circadian rhythms, compromises our health, and stifles astronomers. But compared with our other environmental woes, light pollution is an easy fix.
We don't need to shoot out the lights and return to candles and torches.
“Light what you need, when you need it” is the advice given on the Dark-Sky website. We can choose shielded, low-glare, low-wattage fixtures that, unlike cobra lights, provide direct illumination to the ground, instead of up and out. We can turn them off when they're not needed.
What is “dark-sky-friendly” is also earth-friendly. When we venture out and let the night envelop us, we can study the stars and remember where we belong.
The earth will cradle our feet as we walk.