Stars and mists

Seattle is a lousy place to live if you're a star-gazer. It was one of the things I learned soon after moving here (in my first three months I rarely even saw the sun). But I didn't miss it much because the same had been largely true in the SF Bay Area; I had mostly quit star-gazing as a result of being in California.

I hadn't thought about that until the just-finished camping trip in Oregon, near Crater Lake. When the stars came out that first evening even my only reaction was, "Oh... My... God...!" I had quite forgotten what the night sky could look like.

Here in Seattle the main issues are overcast skies, though in the weeks near the end of July/beginning of August --the dry point of the year-- they do clear and that's the time to observe astronomical phenomena, if there are any. The Perseids occur about that time and when I still had the pickup on occasion Kathy and I would pack blankets (summer evenings can get chilly here), head to some location not surrounded by the local 150' to 200' tall trees, and watch the show.

The tall trees in Seattle are the other problem, of course. From my back deck I have a relatively narrow view of the sky because of the tall cedar forest around us. (Our church's previous rector was the one to point out that it's the tall trees coupled with absence of snow that makes Seattle's winters SO very dark and gloomy; people often move away because they can't face another depressing winter here.)

A common factor to both the Bay Area and Seattle is a thing called "light pollution," but in my experience it's not only an esthetic issue: it can be quite dangerous.

I had never heard the term until I started studying for a "green buildings" accreditation and laughed at first, but it was serious and in fact there seem to be various organizations created around the concept that nowhere on Earth today can one see the sky the way everyone did just some 2000 years ago. There's the Dark Sky Initiative, , International Dark-Sky Association, and many more organizations using "Dark " and "Sky/Skies" in their name. I mention them collectively in my "energy efficient buildings" talks, and find that 5 to 20% of the audience has heard of them.

But the issue of light pollution goes further than that, and without going into the details I'll just say that it can be defined as illumination unnecessarily, indifferently or carelessly emitted beyond property boundaries.

Sometimes unavoidably: I stayed once in a hotel in the small Norwegian city of Tromsø, north of the Arctic Circle, and its hotel guest guide helpfully notes that the local ski trails are illuminated during the day. I guess at night you're on your own. (I was there for committee meetings in summer and report that although it is a pleasant town with the world's northernmost Mexican restaurant, I Do Not Like the midnight sun.)

So. Light pollution. In my previous job I became a year-round cycle-commuter. Really easy on the pocketbook, good for the body, and the hour-long bike ride that unavoidably included significant hill-climbs left me quite wide-awake and feeling pretty good on arrival at work (much more than a mere "I survived it again!").

The trouble was that I had to go several miles along a bike/pedestrian/park trail adjacent to a river. Not exactly a "free" river; its boundaries had been constrained a long time ago and was long known as the "Sammamish Slough" though developers of properties along call it the "Sammamish Waterway" and other grander things -- remember my complaint early in this blog about name inflation on the West Coast?

In any event, back to the point: In October and November the Slough produces fogs in the Sammamish Valley. Our first year there, 1993, we sometimes rode out on the trail to watch it rise. Almost spooky, like something from a horror movie (I hate horror movies!), thin tendrils of mist would rise from the river. And fork and spread, growing thicker every which way. Without our bike lights or moonlight we'd not see it but its totally silent spread was wonderful to see, until we were in the thick of it and had to cycle home along the trail.

And that was when I learned about light pollution. Coming home on that trail after work in the dark in winter, when the mist was up and rising, my perception of where the trail lay was confused by the mist reflecting warehouse parking-lot lights across the river, carelessly spreading their bright light far beyond their parking lot boundaries and blinding me if I chanced to look at them. Those lights illuminated the mists around me beyond the capabilities of my (mid-'90s) bicycle light to the point that the dark paths before me looked like "trail" but were in fact deceptive paths straight into the dark cold waters of the slough. From which escape in short order would have been difficult, thanks to the steep banks.

Light pollution.

I remember that even in Midland, some winter nights the neon glow in the sky told you exactly where the Midland Circle was.

But I also remember seeing the night sky (year-round) there like I've rarely seen it since.

I tried to get a photograph of the night sky from the camp near Crater Lake, but I am so unused to photographing "night sky" I have nothing. Maybe one of these years I will capture on "film" the Sammamish mists instead.

And maybe someday, somewhere else, I'll re-engage my interest in stargazing.

I heard the Aurora Borealis once, in Midland. I've heard it once since, here.