Becky and I just got back from a trip through some of the NPS administered lands in Southern Utah. We camped our way from Arches to Zion. One of the really great things was being able to see the stars so clearly at night. Of the parks we visited, Natural Bridges and Bryce Canyon had the darkest night skies.
You can see more photos of the night sky on flickr.
I just went home for a day to sing with my college Glee Club during my former conductor’s last concert. That was a wonderful experience, where I had the opportunity to sing and talk with a number of my classmates and see how life is treating them. On the plane, I read The Living Shore, which was engaging, inspiring, and sad. It’s encourages awe in the world around us and excites dreams of living our lives better.
Particularly challenging while reading were the passages about the recent success of conservationists in the Gulf of Mexico in creating habitat for oysters (The book was published in late 2009). We are hurtling past the critical point where we need to evaluate how we are shaping the world. Our farms produce more than food, and our factories produce more than products. They create ecologies. At present, they aren’t ecologies which we fit into. The Living Shore presents a past shoreline ecology which we likely cannot return to. Hopefully we will be able to create something similarly robust.