The Joshua Tree National Park in California is a good starting place for Laurel Moffatt's reflection on our struggles to see the light.

The park is full of interesting characters as well as a compelling number of stars - most of which are invisible to the outside world. Because of the amount of artificial light we use each night, more than a third of people can no longer see the Milky Way.

But the brightness of the light in deep darkness can show us how faint, how small, how very weak and narrow our own attempts at lighting our own way are.

LINKS

• Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. 
• Emily Dickinson, “I saw no Way – The Heavens were stitched –” , Fr633 (1863) J378
• Fabio Falchi, et al. “The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness”, Science Advances, 10 Jun 2016, Vol 2, Issue 6