On
Friday, before the weekend snow storm started blowing in, I went with a friend
to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, where I’d never been.
To tell the truth, I’ve never felt drawn to this place, despite its handy
proximity to Denver (and to a slightly lesser extent, to Boulder) and its
reputation as home to a range of wildlife. My strongest association to the
arsenal comes from my childhood, when I remember it as a sort of mysterious
place where important wartime activities occurred—though I never knew what sort
of activities those were. Then I remember a period when they were pumping waste
into the ground, and Denver suddenly experienced a rash of small earthquakes.
My mom told a humorous story of being in a sort of … um … compromised sitting
position and getting, in her words, “jostled” from her throne by one of those
small tremors. The next thing I recall was the plan to clean up the arsenal,
and then tales of eagles and deer making a home there, along with other winged
and four-footed creatures.
When
my friend suggested a trip to RMA NWF, I was more than willing because I’ve
been hankering to get outside, having been cooped up by my lingering orthopedic
miseries. My friend, with whom I’ve walked many, many miles over the years, was
game to make it a mostly-driving and light-walking outing, so off we went. Sure
enough, we saw flocks of assorted species of ducks on the lakes, lots of red-tailed hawks, a couple
of harriers, a slew of magpies, a kestrel, many mule deer and a few white-tail deer
– and other stuff I’m not recalling now. We also heard a lot of meadowlarks, whose
lovely liquid song always signals the arrival of spring for me. Every year, my
heart smiles the first time I hear it, even as I realize I’d forgotten to
notice its absence over the winter.
But
maybe best of all, we saw a blue, prairie-wide sky, saw sky and clouds
reflected off of lakes, felt the breeze in our faces and watched it in the
grasses and cattails. I hadn’t realized just how much I’ve been missing the
wonderful, complicated Colorado sky. I’ve written here before about how much I
love this sky, and this blog is splattered with sky pictures in assorted hues.
Still, like the meadowlark’s song, I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until
it was there, above and all around me.
Then,
serendipitously, today’s New York Times
carried an article called “What If We Lost the Sky?” This article was prompted by a recent report by the National Research Council exploring
the possibility of “geoengineering,” artificially changing Earth’s climate—especially
techniques for cooling the climate through artificial means. Among these would be introducing aerosols into the sky to reflect back some of the sun's radiation and thereby reduce the incoming heat—a strategy that might turn the sky white. The idea of fixing
through human intervention what we’ve broken by human intervention carries a
whole host of promising and frightening implications, which I’ll save for
another time. But the title of this article really caught my attention, took me
back to Friday’s excursion and then to many other days and nights beneath
gorgeous skies.
What
if … ?
Although
some folks might turn immediately to practical questions prompted by the notion of messing with
the sky (what would that do to agriculture?), I was especially struck by a
different question raised by this article: the question of awe. It turns out
that some folks have studied the importance of awe in our lives, that sense of
feeling connected to something much larger than ourselves, of being a (small)
part of the vast cosmos. It seems that this experience of awe is especially evoked
by the sky—in fact, a clear starry night sky, the Milky Way arrayed overhead,
is sort of the prototypic source of that feeling. Awe may also come in moments
viewing the ocean, the Grand Canyon, the open rolling prairie, the mountains, and more. But the sky seems to be the premier source of awe.
Maybe
this is what I’ve been missing, I thought. Not only the fresh air and scenery
and the wide sky, but that sense of vastness, with me tiny in its presence. Interestingly,
this research has also shown that the feeling of awe may be an antidote to
egocentrism, may form a foundation for our connection to others and our
commitment to our collective well-being. Hmm. Maybe I’ve been short on that,
too.
So, it seems that the clear recommendation for our individual mental health and the collective
good is simple: spend some with the sky. If you’re interested in taking
on this project, you can warm up to the task by watching a short video embedded in this article, which shows 365 days of hour-by-hour videos of the sky over
San Francisco. Nice. Nice music, too.
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
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