We walk under a wolf moon. No torches light our way and the night is dark. No, not dark. That’s not the way to describe the impossibly bright glow of ice-hard ground that gives back the gift of lunar softness. The landscape seems to hum with the winter light. Not dark. We follow a path of glittering snow through frozen shapes of deep blue, silver and white, past the moon-bathed mountains scattered with stars.
We are on Rùm to capture its darkness in word and image, reporting on its newly acquired status as an International Dark Sky Sanctuary. The idea of somewhere being a sanctuary for darkness intrigued me. Literally a sacred space, a blessed place, the word ’sanctuary’ conjures an image of the inky hush of a shrine. Once upon a time we retreated to the dark of a sanctified refuge, but now we look to provide a place of safety for the dark itself, away from the creep of skyglow.
I don’t remember ever seeing the stars when I lived in London, but I suppose I must have done from time to time. But why would I look up to the night sky when it was filled with the orange glow of streetlights, glaring shop windows and the aviation highway to Heathrow? Like so many people who live in cities, I rarely had the chance to see the stars. Light pollution might not seem to matter that much in comparison to other forms of environmental degradation and destruction but there are many reasons to grieve our loss of connection to the heavens above. As Anna Levin writes we need ‘that enormous expanse of transformational beauty that stretches us and somehow connects us, to immensity, to ourselves.’
There are many people campaigning for our right to see the stars and for nights to be dark. DarkSky International is made up of over 70 Chapters and 2000 Advocates around the world arguing that we must conserve the precious darkness of night, for the good of the human and non-human world. Individuals on the ground, from astronomers to environmentalists, are educating communities about the importance of combatting light pollution.
The Isle of Rùm is Europe’s second Dark Sky Sanctuary – the other is also in the UK – and there are only 23 worldwide, special places where the light of human activity has very little impact. It’s the highest honour that can be bestowed by DarkSky International. Spending a few days on Rùm, I began to adjust to a different rhythm of nights and days. On the first trip out, the moon rose early, around midday, and you could feel the changing of the guard as the day drew out and the shadows lengthened. We headed to the west of the island, Harris Bay, once home to tens of people but now a lonely place where the seabirds cry and the waves grate on the rocky shore. Icy flurries blew in and out. We sat and waited for dark, leaning against the cold polished stone of the mausoleum erected to the Bulloughs, the wealthy family who once owned the island. The light began to change as the sun disappeared, the moon growing ever brighter, and I watched the snow falling out at sea, grey swirls of cloud backlit by the dying of the day. Civil twilight soon gave way to nautical twilight, the time when there’s still light in the sky yet it’s dark enough for the stars to appear, enough stars to sail a ship by.
The days are long gone when we had to rely on heavenly observations, or tables and charts of stars, moons and seasons to navigate the seas or cultivate the land. But as with all those skills and crafts lost in a world of technological innovation, there’s something satisfying, enchanting, even comforting in knowing that it might be possible to read the earth and the heavens in this way. Flick through a nautical almanac and you will know what I mean. It’s mostly impenetrable to me but exists as a catalogue of the cosmic knowledge that at one time was essential and widespread. The language reads like magic. Zenith, azimuth, apogee, perigee, and sidereal time. While it may be the parlance of practical navigation and observation, recite it on a moonlit night beneath the jagged Norse giants of the Rùm Cuillin and it would sound like an incantation. Come to think of it, some of the words do form the basis of the charm spoken by Angela Lansbury’s loveable witch in Bedknobs and Broomsticks that transforms Mr Browne into a rabbit.
We walked back without head torches and the looming trio of Askival, Hallival and Trollaval wore a crown of stars.
Just above the horizon to the north was Vega, the second brightest star of the night sky and the measure of all other apparent brightness. The night we were out Vega paled next to Jupiter and Venus but outshone many smudges and pinpricks of light elsewhere above us. Layers of distance and magnitude are revealed as we stare at the glistering tapestry. Those who campaign for the reduction of light pollution want all of us to feel this wonder, to know brightness, to sense darkness and to cast stellar spells. But only one in 20 people in the UK can see a starry night sky. It surprised me that the two Dark Sky Sanctuaries in Europe are in the UK and that in a country which can feel lacking in wild or remote spaces, there are still places untouched by the polluting glow of our modern lives.
It’s not all about us of course. The cosmic splendour is not ours to possess, and the dark is not there to provide a spectacle for human eyes. Reclaiming darkness is not about ticking off one more Instagrammable experience, rather it’s about preserving the rhythm of light and dark that the living world needs to rest, recuperate, navigate, or shelter.
On our journeys, we have encounters with other inhabitants of the night. Moths who whirr with determined haste, bats who flit in zig-zag patterns, deer padding through the cover of darkness. One night on the beach, a seal huffs from the blackness, watching us somewhere out in the pitch-dark water.
We spend one evening at Guirdil Bay. The night is long and bitter but lighted by a brilliant, ethereal moon glow. Bloodstone Hill wears a snowy mantle, the beach coated in rime. We hope to see the Northern Lights, the Nimble Men, flickering above us but they are quiet that night. Wandering up the hill in the dark, the bog alder twists towards the waxing gibbous moon, seeming to crave her light. Gaelic legend tells that the spirit world of the Nimble Men is a violent one, where everlasting war rages, and blood drops from the sky onto the stones below, painting them red. Heliotrope found on the beach is stained by stories from the heavens.
Stars and the skies are multidimensional maps of time and space, not just the deep time of distant galaxies or worlds but the imaginative knowledge of cultures and peoples beyond our own and outwith our own era. You may look up and see ‘every side the heaven cleft by a broad belt, or if someone at thy side point out that circle set with brilliants – that is what men call the Milky Way’ (Aratus’ Phaenomena). You see what Aratus saw over 2000 years ago.
I remember a very different trip beneath a different sky to Las Vegas for a martial arts competition. I was staying in The Venetian, and I wandered through the sterile air, past the fake flowing streams, and stared up at the manufactured sky and clouds. Somewhere, not too far away, were the dark skies of the Nevada desert but here the sun always shines, the lights always glow. Perfect emptiness may be all we are left with, in a world of technological conceits and controlled weather. A fake firmament, the empyrean that holds hollow gods.
We would lose something important by severing the connection with the cosmic world, and if we could only see the stars on screens, digitised for our benefit, and might never again stare up at the same sky as Aratus. Each of Dante’s three books of the Divine Comedy ends with Italian words for stars, as the protagonist emerges from the dark realms of the underworld to ascend ever higher to the heavens that point to something beyond himself. We all deserve to know words for stars, their many names, many stories and constellations. The world beneath our feet but also above us is overlaid with myths and wonder if we have the chance to go out and look into the dark beyond.
Cover and article photo credits: Nicholas J R White
Kat Hill
Kat Hill is a writer based on the Isle of Skye working on community, belonging and environment, and human and non-human encounters. Her most recent book, Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter, was released with William Collins in 2024. Kat also works on assignments internationally for the Financial Times, Guardian and New York Times.