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I have to thank Mary for introducing me to Trader Joe’s and Chocolate Raspberry sticks. I’m not sure if I should thank her for the latter though, because whenever I have them nearby I tend to eat way too many of them. But they are tasty… and I don’t even like chocolate stuff most of the time. Anyway, Trader Joe’s is definitely one perk to moving to CA.

At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milk Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population had abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities grew polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration.

-Carl Sagan, “Contact”

While driving across this remarkably huge country on our way to California, Marly and I stopped to spend an afternoon hiking along the rim of the Grand Canyon. Quite impressive, even on the second visit, and I still want to go back sometime when I’m not just rushing through and actually hike down into the canyon. But, what really impressed me came later that night while driving through the Arizona desert on the way back to I40. It was amazingly dark. I mean middle of nowhere, no moon, REALLY dark…and really clear. The first thing we noticed was how bright oncoming headlights were from so far away. Then we looked up.

The sky was impressive enough that we found a place to pull over, and climbed up onto our penske truck just to stare at it. I don’t remember ever seeing a sky like this one before. A whole lot more stars visible, and an amazingly bright milky way that looked like a glowing cloud. Not at ALL like what I can see looking up from my new neighborhood in Southern California.

To really top off the uniqueness of that day: in between our hiking and our star gazing, we cooked dinner on a camp stove in a gas station parking lot. Instant mashed potatoes with veggies and ham. Marly is a very well prepared traveler .