Global Sleep Under the Stars Night

Claire Doll
MSMU Class of 2024

(8/2024) I grew up ten minutes from Baltimore City. My whole life I have looked into the night sky to see just bits and pieces of stars: scattered, twinkling pinpricks of light, floating in the almost-black sky. I say "almost black" because the night sky was never completely dark where I lived. I later learned that this was a result of light pollution, which casts a tinge of unwanted light into the night sky, painting it a grayish black. Skyglow. Growing up, I never saw the full, black night sky.

But until I moved to a more rural home, or until I began college at the Mount, I thought this was normal. I thought that stars were minimal in their appearance, and the sky at night would never be the inky black that we were told it’d be, and I should be thankful to live near a city. I fell asleep to the hum of the highway at night, car engines and tires against pavement and the symphony of vehicles that would crescendo into dawn. I fell asleep to real, human, alive noise. We checked local traffic by looking into the backyard window, and at night we counted few stars.

This is not to say I am not thankful for my childhood spent under a tainted night sky. My fondest memories include midnight swims where the pool water glowed electric, and mornings at the Baltimore farmers market (with the most delicious fried oyster mushrooms), and sunsets that melted into faraway city skyscrapers.

So, why Global Sleep Under the Stars Night? After all, I’ve never even camped until I was 19, and the thought of more than fifteen scattered stars in the night sky seemed unthinkable, almost fiction.

When I moved to northern Carroll County after my high school graduation, and then to Mount St. Mary’s in August 2020, I realized the importance of space—not even outer space, but real, physical space surrounding me. Or, in better terms, the emptiness encircling me. Landscapes and corn fields and mountains. And deep into the night, when all traces of light vanished, there they were: stars. Lots of them. Constellations, even, trailing across the sky like baby’s breath dotting grass. Stars linking and connecting and sparkling—definitely more than fifteen of them—pressed against the black sky.

In college I would grow to be more outdoorsy—from camping trips in Shenandoah backcountry and Assateague Island to midnight drives in Emmitsburg and beyond—I learned just how breathtaking the dark can be.

True darkness is when there is no difference between closing your eyes and opening them. My mind goes to the ultimate form of darkness before the earth as we know it was created: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light: and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). Can you imagine—no stars, no moon or sun? Total and complete darkness, everywhere and nowhere, in your waking and sleeping and dreaming states?

While chilling, true darkness can also be beautiful. A Forbes article titled "The Death of Night" focuses on the downfall of light pollution and the irreversible effects. "Light pollution and its trademark ‘skyglow’ is getting worse. Much worse. It’s getting so serious that stars, beautiful open clusters and even distant galaxies in the night sky there were visible just a decade ago are now impossible to see," writes author Jamie Carter.

This isn’t talked about enough. Sources of overlighting—streetlights, floodlights, factory lights, and even indoor lights—all contribute to light pollution. In fact, cities are easily viewable from the International Space Station at night, revealing even from outer space that humans are present.

Do we really need to be that known to the universe?

Remote regions such as Siberia, the Sahara, and the Amazon are blanketed in total darkness, while the night skies in countries like Singapore, Qatar, and Kuwait are soaked in artificial light. In America we are somewhere in between, depending on location. In Emmitsburg I fondly recall stargazing at night, finding galaxies in the dark night sky, as if I had grown up picking out stars all along.

August 8th is Global Sleep Under the Stars Night. I’m not suggesting you pitch a tent in the backyard or book a camping trip in the middle of nowhere. Rather, I urge you to stay up late that night—take a walk or sit on the porch—and look up. Go on a drive and find constellations, trace them with your finger, park and turn your headlights off. Gaze until the darkness grows normal, until the difference between closing your eyes and opening them are sparkling pinpricks of light against outer space. Do you understand that there are galaxies and other worlds out there, millions of stars and planets? That the universe is far too incomprehensible, but rather something to be marveled? And have you ever recalled something more beautiful?

I chose this day—or night—because I never got to sleep under the stars when I was younger. I wouldn’t trade my childhood for anything, and I mean it, but my discovery and fascination of stars has truly shaped me as a person. I have grown to not only love the sky but also cherish it. I desire to preserve the sky for my children, for future generations who are already at risk for a more artificially brightened world.

While light is associated with symbols of knowledge and truth and goodness, you cannot have light without the absence of light. Darkness is not all that it’s interpreted to be; in fact, the unknowing, the mystery, the lingering fear is natural, and what shapes our experiences. God used the very fabric of darkness to create day and night. Without darkness we would have never revealed the galaxies embedded in the deep universe, the stars trailing their twinkling dust in a forever black sky.

Read other articles by Claire Doll