I grew up on a farm.  We’re sitting out on the deck the other night and it just brought me back to the old farmhouse.  My mother loved to sit out on the top porch deck in the evenings, and we would sit there—my brother, myself, and my mother—and those warm summer nights just watching the fireflies and the satellites.  In those days satellites were a big thing, to see them go over.  And I remember the creak of the neighbor’s windmill. And my mother would always say, every time we went out on that deck, “Why don’t they oil that thing?”  But to me, it was just part of the night sounds along with the crickets, and some years the cicadas.  We had lilac bushes underneath.  And these were the days before farm lights, you know, yard lights, so it was a really, really dark sky.  And it was a beautiful time and I remember it very fondly.

I just remember, it might have been a couple of years ago, I was trying to find those dark skies again. I kept driving out of town, further out of town. You know, “Nope, there’s another yard light.” I never had those dark skies again.