Starry, Starry Nights at Dark Sky Preserves

Some time ago, many animals, including saber-toothed tiger and woolly mammoth, failed in their attempts to rid the community of grizzly bear, whose mean-spirited behavior had upset nature’s balance. That is until the birds, led by robin, pierced grizzly’s heart. Grizzly’s blood reddened the robin’s breast and, as he shook in pain, cloaked the autumn leaves in red and orange.

“The Creator placed the grizzly bear constellation in the night sky to remind us that bullying others carries consequences,” says Matricia Bauer, an Indigenous Knowledge Keeper from Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. “Our creation story also tells of the star woman falling from the sky to become our people.”

It’s a brisk March evening, and I’m sitting with Bauer by the fire beside Beauvert Lake in Jasper, Alberta, waiting for the gunmetal-colored sky to darken and reveal a palette of seemingly infinite stars. I’m visiting to explore the most accessible and second-largest Dark Sky Reserve in the world.

“An elder taught me that when you used to look at the night sky and see all the stars, the Creator also looked down on Earth and saw our fires in reflection. Today, instead of fires sparkling across the landscape, our continents are outlined by the glare of artificial light. People must travel to find the night sky.”

Jasper remains my favorite national park in North America. I’ve cycled the trails above Maligne Canyon in summer and trekked beneath the canyon’s frozen cascades during winter. I’ve rafted the Class II Athabasca River with my kids when they were young, and skied at the fantastic Marmot Basin Ski Resort.

What I never set out to accomplish on previous visits was to study the equally complex night sky. Living in Seattle, looking for stars is rarely rewarding, given our cloud-laden skies and the urban light that, to Bauer’s point, artificially illuminates the continental border. Now, I can’t imagine visiting Jasper or any other Dark Sky Reserve without seeking out the heavens for their beauty because, like so many elements of the natural world, dark skies are disappearing at an alarming rate.

“Light pollution is poorly understood, but simple to solve,” DarkSky International CEO Ruskin Hartley told me over dinner in Tucson, home to DarkSky International’s headquarters. “It harms wildlife — from plants to birds, bugs to fish — wastes energy, and impacts human health.”

Founded in 1988, DarkSky International designates Dark Sky Reserves and Places, areas that have taken steps to restrict and reduce light pollution. Hartley says there are simple changes we can all make that are readily available and cost-effective, like turning off outdoor lights or installing motion detectors, closing curtains, and pointing essential lights downward.

“Most people are unaware that Jasper has a mandate that every light must be directed downward,” says Bauer. “We have a responsibility within a national park to be different. It creates a decent way of being. Our dark sky policies are why we can always see the Milky Way on clear nights.”

Jasper also celebrates dark skies in other ways, beginning with the Jasper Dark Sky Festival. Held over two weekends in late October, the festival features astrophysicists, astronomers, and popular science personalities like Bill Nye presenting lectures and workshops. Come nightfall, everyone heads outdoors for telescope experiences, night hikes, and star sessions held at the top of the Jasper SkyTram, among other star attractions.

Jasper Planetarium, located at Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, also conducts nightly planetarium and telescope experiences throughout the year. I grew up visiting Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, New York, the corporate birthplace of Eastman Kodak and Bausch & Lomb. The state-of-the-art projector was one of a handful of world-class resources in this provincial city. I’d never considered a planetarium as intimate as the Jasper setup, but it works.

I step inside the 20-person dome, slide onto a comfortable chaise, and receive an introductory astronomy lesson that includes familiar constellations, recent discoveries, and the latest theories about black holes, imploding galaxies, and other mind-boggling concepts. Understandably, star guides love to convey astronomical numbers the way I Latin-name-drop Anas platyrhynchos when observing a mallard duck. I can’t help myself.

“In astronomy, if you can fit the number on a blackboard, then assume the calculation is within the margin of error,” says Avi Kaul, our delightful docent at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO). A University of Arizona grad who plans to attend graduate school in astronomy, Kaul says he didn’t even know the night sky existed as a child.

“Gurgaon, India, a suburb of Delhi where I grew up, was so light polluted I can’t remember ever seeing a single star,” he recalls. “However, when I was young, I became captivated with Earth and Sky, a book I eventually memorized after reading it so many times that its cover fell off. One night while at U. of A. I was taken to a Dark Sky Reserve for stargazing. Seeing all the stars and tying them back to what I’d learned in Earth and Sky remains the most profound moment of my life. I now share my awe for the stars with visitors who attend KPNO’s Nightly Observing Program.”

KPNO is home to one of the largest collections of telescopes in the world. It is located 54 miles outside of Tucson in the Tohono O’odham Nation. A serpentine road slithers up the mountain toward an array of two dozen telescopes that suggest we’re entering the James Bond Moonraker set, save for an absence of armed personnel clad in white coveralls running about in search of 007.

The campus doesn’t lack drama, however. Connected digitally to university astronomy departments across America, the KPNO domes spring to life each night. Panels loudly descend as the orbs rotate, and the telescopes elevate and shift in search of cosmic mysteries at the command of astronomers stationed from MIT to CalTech, 2 of the 49 institutions that conduct remote research here.

Our observations didn’t lead to any eureka moments comparable to the previously discovered gravitational lens, a “foreground galaxy that gravitationally distorts the images of a more distant galaxy behind it.”

“KPNO is also home to Spacewatch,” Kaul tells us. “The telescopes scan the sky in search of asteroids that could produce a catastrophic impact on Earth like the one that destroyed the dinosaurs.”

Our Nightly Observing Program does yield vivid views of Jupiter, including 4 of her 95 moons. We also spot nebulae and a binary star, actually two stars gravitationally bound to each other. The seven sisters of Pleiades make an appearance as we take turns peering through the Levine 0.4-meter telescope. We also spot what Kaul calls an “elusive beast,” another galaxy. “The Andromeda galaxy,” he tells us in his mirthful guide parlance, “is only two million light years away.”

The temperature tumbles precipitously at 4,500 feet above the desert. We shiver through the night, ticking off constellations until a shooting star elevates polite interest to cosmic gasps. Kaul informs us that the star is, in fact, a meteoroid entering the Earth’s atmosphere, but nobody pays this fact any mind. Shadowed by more than two dozen telescopes, catching a shooting star still equals celestial magic.

Scanning the skies, ignoring the plethora of satellites that now compete for our galactic attention, I wonder how many of today’s children have experienced the opportunity to gaze with wonderment as a star — okay, a meteor — streaks across the blackened night.

Hartley says dark sky tourism is a growing trend, owing partly to the fear that night as we know it will go the way of the Amazon rainforest, Great Barrier Reef, and other formerly pristine environments that once seemed too vast to disappear.

According to a February 2023 article in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s newsletter, our fears are well founded. A study from Globe at Night, a citizen science program run by the National Science Foundation, ­concluded that “growing light pollution has robbed about 30 percent of people around the globe and 80 percent of people in the United States of the nightly view of their home galaxy.”

“Cities and communities are striving to be more sustainable by using less and protecting their lands and waters,” says Hartley, who previously led organizations to protect California’s coastal redwoods and marine environments. “We need to expand this concept of sustainability and protecting the natural world to the sky overhead.”

Hartley further notes that Dark Sky “Places” energize communities to work together to protect and celebrate natural darkness and starry skies through quality lighting. “They provide the chance to enjoy the world’s beauty at night, be it a star party, a guided night walk, or a dazzling light show of fireflies,” he says. “With more than 200 International Dark Sky Reserves and Places around the world and over 100 located within the United States, you don’t have to travel far.”

After our visit to Jasper, we discovered another window into the night sky. Rather than hop on a flight back to Seattle, my partner and I pause for the night at Métis Crossing, an Indigenous-owned property located beside the North Saskatchewan River less than 90 minutes from Edmonton.

We’ve come to sample the Sky Watching Domes, orb-shaped cabins with a partial glass roof. There is no need for in-room entertainment here; we lay in bed comparing our constellation notes as we gaze upward.

From Big Bend, Texas, to Maine to Washington State, travelers are adding dark sky accommodations to their must-have amenity lists.

“In Cree, ahcâhk means ‘spirit’ and acahkos translates as ‘star,’” Matricia Bauer told me when we huddled close to the fire in Jasper. This is because the spirit is only one piece of the star to us. We’re not humans destined to a spiritual state; we are spirits having a human experience. The night sky reminds us that this is so.”

On April 8, we gathered by the millions across the band of totality to watch the moon eclipse the sun and, for a few minutes, our differences as we focused on the sky above. The moon won’t cast its shroud over the sun in the contiguous U.S. again until 2044, yet every night, billions of other stars align to perform a celestial magic show — if we remember to look.

Crai S. Bower is an award-winning writer and photographer who contributes travel and lifestyle articles and images to numerous publications, including Condé Nast Traveler, Explore, and Bloomberg Pursuits. Learn more at FlowingStreamMedia.net.

Stargazing

Dark Sky Parks, Sanctuaries, and Places can be found throughout North America. Here are nine outstanding destinations for nighttime viewing.

The 9-million-acre Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve is the world’s largest protected Dark Sky Place, comprising land on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border. The McDonald Observatory hosts a Star Party most evenings.

Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida, borders Everglades National Park and is among the most biodiverse environments in North America. Free Night Sky Programs are scheduled throughout the year.

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Minnesota, is a remote area virtually devoid of light pollution threats and is considered the world’s largest Dark Sky Sanctuary. There are more than 1,200 miles of canoe routes in the Boundary Waters.

Cape Lookout National Seashore includes three North Carolinian barrier islands known for dune structures and salt marshes. The Crystal Coast Stargazers have a variety of night sky programs.

Mont-Mégantic, Québec, was the world’s first International Dark Sky Reserve. The Mont Mégantic Observatory and ASTROLab, an astronomy activity center, host evening programs and an annual festival.

Joshua Tree National Park is the closest International Dark Sky Park to greater Los Angeles. The park contains four designated stargazing areas and is considered among the best places to observe the Milky Way in Southern California.

The 87,500-acre Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine is New England’s first designated Dark Sky Place. The Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters host an annual Stars Over Katahdin celebration.

Idaho’s first International Dark Sky Park, The Craters of the Moon National Park offers star parties organized by the Pocatello Astronomical Society. These interpretive stargazing events are scheduled throughout the year.

Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, in Montana and Alberta, is the first International Dark Sky Park to span an international border. This UNESCO World Heritage Site offers sky-gazing programs led by park rangers and local volunteers.

To find a Dark Sky Place near you, visit darksky.org/what-we-do/international-dark-sky-places/all-places.

This article is featured in the September/October 2024 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.