Often, on nights spent in the mountains here in Eastern Tennessee, I’ve stared up at the sky and wondered what the experience must have been like for Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, two of the first white men to explore the area at a time when Cherokee villages were the only dots of civilization in what was largely wilderness.
Boone was best known for his exploration and settlement of what would later become the state of Kentucky, but he wandered into Tennessee. A tree in Washington County bears witness: “D. Boon Cilled a. Bar on tree in the year 1760.” (Read: “Killed a Bear on [this] tree.”)
Crockett lived here, helped settle the state, served under Andrew Jackson in the Tennessee Militia, and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He then went south into Texas, got involved in the Texas Revolution, and died there at the Alamo on March 6, 1836 following Santa Ana’s siege. He was 46.
He once described himself as “fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust.” No wonder I think about the sky he stared up at: There are some days I feel like his awkward younger brother.
Sadly, the stars I see from my perch on Big Frog Mountain are likely not the same as those witnessed by Dan’l and Davy. Here in the 21st Century, my sky is muddied by what astronomers call “light pollution.” As depicted in the image above, man-made lights here on the earth so fill the sky with their artificial brilliance that they obscure the heavens’ fainter stars.
Sure, I see a wealth of lights, but nothing to compare with the sky my forebears admired. It seems humans are caught up in a race to keep the world laboring along like an ant colony 24/7, and a glorious night sky is a small sacrifice in the pursuit of eternal production of goods and endless entertainment.
Don’t get me wrong: I avail myself of those goods and am in constant need of stimulation. I don’t know an American human born after 1950 who isn’t in some way caught up in the ravenous hunger of the technological era. But there are times I feel like a hamster on a wheel, running, running, running, but never getting anywhere.
I am deeply grateful for the connection technology provides my love and me. Without it our relationship would have moved at a snail’s pace. But I never lose the knowledge that this is artificial and a dim reflection of what will come when we are finally, permanently together, occupying the same space, breathing the same air, able to touch, sniff, cuddle, annoy, and admire one another close-up, when we’ll no longer have to sacrifice the greater lights of physical familiarity for the lesser, man-made lights of intimacy through technology.
Satellite Photo Courtesy of NASA Goddard Flight Safety Center, compiled from Oct 1994 to March 1994.
