Olbers’ paradox argues that if the Universe was infinitely old, then the night sky would be as bright as day, as our eyes would intersect a star or an entire galaxy in every direction we looked. The Universe is less than 14 billion years old, and while that may seem like an eternity, it is far short of infinity and so we have dark skies at night… Imagine the pleasure of being so far from city lights that not a hint of the otherwise ubiquitous mercury and sodium glare is visible anywhere, and at an altitude where a full one third of Earth’s atmosphere is beneath you, and what is above was washed clean by an early summer thunderstorm… Imagine a night sky so full of stars that you can see the landscape around you not just in shapes and shadows, but patterns and textures, and if you wait long enough for your eyes to adapt, perhaps even colors. So there I was, having dreamt of this location, of this moonless night, but awestruck nevertheless at the patterns emerging before my eyes as they slowly adapted to the starlit darkness. I wondered, eyes never leaving the perfection of the heavens, if the details I resolved in the Milky Way were really as vivid as they seemed, or were they the result of studying our home galaxy to a greater detail than was ever possible without a telescope or a camera? Did my ancestors, following the trail of the straw thief Vahagn across the sky, resolve the Great Rift into imaginary shapes as did the Inca? What stories did they weave into the dark bands of interstellar gas and dust? I walked back to my tent as Scorpius swung its tail toward the Rift and Antares slowly disappeared behind the nearest peaks… Sunrise was less than four hours away, and like an insatiable madman who cannot tear his gaze from his object of adoration, I had resolved to greet the dawn as I always do when backpacking in the Eastern Sierra…
On a hot summer day, I close my eyes and remember... I remember the cool wind blowing southward across the lake... I remember the secluded pathway, first of asphalt, then of weathered wood, leading to the sandy beach where the crunch of each footstep rang loud among the silent tufa towers... I remember a sky so full of stars that the constellations merged into one-another, creating a continuous starscape. I remember the first glimpse of the Milky Way, even before it was fully dark, and I remember its full glory before the Moon rose to wash it away... I open my eyes, and I wish I was there again, among the stars... Photographed July 2016.
Death Valley National Park boasts one of the darkest locations in the U.S., and millions of stars are visible in the night sky. The ancient wagons and trains parked at Harmony Borax Works serve as the perfect foreground. The Sun, having set only a couple of hours before, is still illuminating the western horizon while stars fill the sky in every direction.
