Aside from all the health effects, all the negative disruption to our fragile wildlife, and all the money and energy wasted on excessive artificial lights, perhaps the most effective way to understand the importance of dark skies is to simply look up. Every year, more and more people are losing access to the night sky, unable to see the stars and planets due to light pollution. One of the most well-known galaxies, the Milky Way – that band of sparkling, ethereal light smeared over our heads – is becoming so difficult to observe that a growing majority of people believe they have never seen it. In 1994, an earthquake in Los Angeles knocked out all the power lines, and the emergency services received numerous calls from residents reporting that a strange, silvery cloud had appeared in the night sky. They were seeing the Milky Way as, for the first time in their lives, it was not obliterated by the skyglow emitted from the city.
For the light of a star to reach the human retina, a long, difficult journey must first take place. A star is born when a group of atoms are squeezed under enough pressure for their nuclei to undergo fusion, a nuclear reaction in which atomic nuclei fuse together to form one heavier nucleus, releasing energy at the same time. All stars are created as a result of a balance of different forces. One of these is the force of gravity, which compresses atoms in interstellar gas until the fusion reaction begins; once this has happened, the reactions exert another outward force. As long as the inward force of gravity is equal to the outward force generated by the fusion reaction, the star remains stable, and as soon as the star is formed, gamma ray photons are released from the nuclear core. From here, they travel through the different layers of the star, until they finally burst free and speed through space at almost 300,000km per second – known as the speed of light. Depending on where they originated from, these photons can travel for as little as eight minutes or as long as millions of years before making it to the earth’s atmosphere, where they finally reach the back of our eyes and appear as a tiny sparkle in the sky that we then call a star.
It’s amazing to think of starlight flying through the cosmos and down to our planet, only to be lost in the skyglow being emitted from artificial lights above our cities. Governments around the world have been trying to reduce light pollution in a number of creative ways, including replacing dazzling, outdated outdoor lights with more advanced, low-glare versions, encouraging the use of motion sensors to switch off lights when they are not needed, and replacing old street lights with downward-facing lamps to reduce the amount of light being projected into the sky.
It will come as no surprise that some of the strongest advocates of dark skies are stargazing and amateur astronomy groups. Back at Butser Ancient Farm, we have a Hampshire-based group who spend the long winter nights huddled between the roundhouses with their telescopes pointing towards the stars, making use of the fact that the farm lies within the South Downs, an International Dark Sky Reserve, and is one of the darkest points in the National Park. There is something mesmerising about amateur astronomy – not just being able to watch the stars and planets, but watching the stargazers themselves. Their passion for observing the night sky is infectious, as is their skill with night-sky photography, their knowledge of telescopic technology, and their awareness of which celestial bodies are lingering above our heads at any given moment. Today, astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can make important contributions through recording their observations all over the world.
More than anything, protecting our skies from light pollution is vital for reminding us of our place in the universe. Somewhere along the way, we accidentally became the dominant species on earth, and with this came a sense of superiority over every other living thing we share the planet with. Many of us now believe the earth is there to serve our human purposes alone, but when we gaze up at the night sky and count every star, every planet lost in space above our heads, we are reminded that we are only one species in the wide universe, and there is still so much we don’t know and have no control over. The night sky reminds us of how vibrant our planet is, urging us not to take it for granted, but to protect it and care for it – this living, breathing world suspended in the cold, glittering vastness of space.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Mountain
We had been driving for six hours now, the camper van stuffed with two duvets, a crate of food, Bananagrams, binoculars and two now-empty packets of Veggie Percy Pigs from the petrol station. It was the usual set-up for a weekend away in the camper van, but we had long since exhausted the driving playlist and already reached full-on wriggle-mode from sitting down for too long. Phone reception had been lost 20 minutes ago and our coffees had been drained; we could only wait for our destination to appear.
And then the rain started.
There were only light specks at first, the type that makes everyone remark: ‘Oo, look. Rain.’ The windscreen wipers smeared them into thin streaks mingled with dirt and road dust, but then more appeared, and more, until we were caught in a cyclonic downpour in the dark, driving through the valleys of Snowdonia National Park in north Wales.
Like all our trips in the camper van, we didn’t have an exact destination in mind. We were here to explore Snowdonia, another of Britain’s International Dark Sky Reserves, spread over 2,130km2 – around 10 per cent of the total land area of Wales. With such a wild, rugged landscape, the park supported little human settlement, and consequently it was a starlit haven, naturally dark and separated from the glow of the coastal cities. Astro-tourism had been drawing visitors to the park before it was made a Dark Sky Reserve in 2015, but now people came from across the country to gaze up at the stars above the wild Welsh landscape – including us.
We’d come to witness the beauty of the National Park at night, but while we were here we had decided to spend the day climbing Snowdon, something neither of us had yet done. We planned to set off the next day, so with all the organisation we could manage, we typed ‘Mount Snowdon’ into Google Maps and presumed it was now taking us as close as we could get to the bottom of the mountain without leaving tarmac. Most of our camper van journeys involved heading vaguely in the right direction and pulling over when we were nearly there and came across a pleasant sleeping spot. But it was now late evening on a thunderous night in March, and we could see nothing beyond the edge of the road, where our headlights feebly petered out.
Nevertheless, it was deliciously cosy, bumbling along in the dark with a box of food in the back, surrounded by duvets and with a cup of coffee available at a click of the stove ignition. There’s nothing like a camper van to make you feel completely in harmony with the outdoors. When the sun pours down in summer, we throw open the doors and feel the warmth on our skin, reading books beside rivers and fields, painting, and eating crisps. When it’s miserable, an irrepressible sense of snugness creeps in, watching the rain hammer against the windows of our little nest on wheels. We call it ours, but technically it belongs to Dave’s parents who offer it out to the family all year round in exchange for one of our cars. There’s a family rota in the kitchen on which we had scribbled ‘Tiff and Dave to Wales’, although at this time of year we needn’t have worried it would already have been reserved. North Wales in March is beautiful, but there was a reason we had brought along our ski jackets and plenty of blankets.
At this time of year, visitors to Snowdonia can expect rainfall almost every other day and an average temperature of just 6.8°C. It’s hardly the Costa del Sol, but when a place is as wild and green as Snowdonia, there have to be some downsides. The land is awash with rust-coloured grassland, moss-strewn rocks and turquoise freshwater pools as clear as glass, and at the centre of it all stands Snowdon, the highest point in the British Isles at 1,085 metres above sea level. The name Snowdon comes from the Old English ‘snow hill’, presumably for the snowfall spread across its peak, while the Welsh name Yr Wyddfa means ‘the tumulus’, thought to refer to the old folk story of Rhitta Gawr, the strongest and most violent giant of the ancient times.
The st
ory goes that Rhitta became fed up of the humans who fought to rule over the land of Prydain, and as the strongest and bravest of them all, he decided he should be in charge. One after another, he attacked and defeated the leaders of all the kingdoms, shaving off their beards and weaving them into his cloak as proof of his victory. Kings soon came from foreign lands to try and slay the giant, but each one was defeated until, finally, the great warrior Arthur set out with his men to Rhitta’s fortress in the mountains of Gwynedd. They fought on the highest peak of the highest mountain, hammered by a winter wind, and as the battle continued, swords were shattered, shields torn and bones broken. By the end, both were wounded and covered in blood, but with one last burst of determination, Arthur brought his sword down deep into Rhitta’s skull, and the giant was dead. Arthur and his men piled rocks onto the fallen giant, and the place was named Gwyddfa Rhita – Rhitta’s Tomb – which changed over time to become Yr Wyddfa.
We had now come so close to the mountain that we could see the visitor centre further along up the road on our Google Maps screen, so we decided to pull over at the next suitable place and settle down for the night. The only problem was that the torrent of rain made it impossible to see more than a few metres ahead of us, and without any phone signal I couldn’t reprogramme Google to tell us exactly where we were. The map was just coloured shapes – no road names, no directions – but in the end we found a quiet patch of road with a large blue splodge next to it on the map, which we cleverly decoded as water. We pulled up on the verge and put the kettle on, set the bed up and made supper, utterly lost in the dark. At least in the morning we would wake beside some pretty body of water, and that was good enough for us.
The rain threw itself against the windows and walls of the camper van, and inside we were jostled about while we sipped tea and ate beans on toast, cosied up in the newly made bed. Tucked away under two duvets, we felt warm and snug, but deep down we knew we would have to venture back outside before the morning came – we’d drunk too much tea. For now, we settled in with the blinds open, watching the rain fall against the glass and the black nothingness of Snowdonia fade away behind it. We knew it was cold outside – we could already feel it seeping through the walls – and by early morning the temperature would have dropped even lower. But we were visiting northern Wales in early spring, and expected nothing less than a few drops of rain and a nip in the air. We were looking forward to climbing Snowdon in the morning, if only to warm our bones against the cold March weather. At last we finished our tea, ventured out into the fearsome night and returned as soon as we were able, rocked to sleep by the fumbling hands of Wales’ thunderous gales.
Despite having ancestral roots in Wales – something my mum is extremely proud of – I was unfamiliar with this part of the country and wanted to explore more of it, particularly as it was one of only a handful of sites across the UK that had been given International Dark Sky Reserve status. Being from the South Downs, where the stars were also bright and undiluted by light pollution, I was keen to see the stars, but it wasn’t essential. Instead, I was here to explore a place that was so wild and rugged that it was almost cut off from the rest of Britain, to learn about the communities that lived here and how they had formed their own connection with the darkness.
By morning the storm had passed, and we woke to the peace of the Welsh hills. In daylight our mystery landscape revealed itself – a beautiful reddish-purple moorlandinterspersed with rivers and lakes, the morning sunlight dancing off the surface of the blue splodge we had parked next to. We brewed a pot of coffee and grilled a couple of pains au chocolat until they were oozing their filling everywhere, then tidied away and drove on to Pen-y-Pass, the car park frequented by hikers who want to ascend Snowdon up the Miners’ Track, one of the easier routes up the mountain. It was Friday, which meant there were fewer hikers to share the path with as many visitors would be at work. Dave was self-employed and could take time off when he liked, and at the beginning of the month I had left my job at Butser Ancient Farm to finally take the plunge and go freelance.
I loved my job at Butser and, as everybody always joked, nobody ever really left the farm. I would still volunteer there, cycle over and visit the goats, use the tech pods to develop my wood-carving and metalworking skills, and generally just bask in the beauty of the place. But on the day I left, I had just one week to go before the release of my first book Food You Can Forage, and I had already been thinking of taking a week or two off to focus on the promotion. Dave had been encouraging me for a long time to go freelance, but it was only in the time leading up to my first book being published that I finally felt ready to do it. With the momentum of the book I had made lots of contacts, spoken at events and secured commissioned work for magazines, and I was feeling optimistic about the future. It was now or never. I helped welcome my replacement, Rachel (who was far better at the job than me), and everybody wished me well with cards, flowers, a bottle of gin and a beautiful card painted by my ever-inspirational friend Victoria who worked in the upstairs office. On the last day of February I waved goodbye to the farm and started my career as a freelance writer, artist and environmentalist.
There were evident downsides to leaving employment and a juicy salary behind, but I’d never felt so liberated, so free to pursue the life I wanted and to spend my days doing exactly what my creativity encouraged me to do. The best part was choosing how and when I worked, being able to wake up in Snowdonia National Park on a Friday morning, to climb a mountain and write notes about the Welsh wilderness to fill my next book. My income may have been questionable and my future mortgage applications looked dubious, but this was freedom like I’d never known before, and I hoped I could hold on to it forever.
We arrived at Pen-y-Pass and layered up with all the clothes we had, including ski jackets, woolly hats, gloves and hiking boots. The sun was shining and the temperature pleasant at the bottom, but the English hadn’t called it Snowdon for nothing. A sign beside the path told us the temperature at the summit would feel like -10°C, with bitter winds blowing in 65kmph gusts. In fact, beside that sign there was another message from the mountain warden, warning that only climbers with crampons and pickaxes would be able to climb to the top of Snowdon today, as the conditions were too dangerous for normal hikers. We were disappointed, but as we were here and ready to ramble, we decided to climb as high as we felt we could, and then turn around and enjoy a leisurely walk back. We packed tomato and avocado sandwiches, trail mix, walnuts, dried mango, chocolate, bananas and a thermos of coffee, before locking up the van and starting the long climb up the mountain.
We had been without signal or WiFi for almost half a day by this point, and it was bliss. In the last few weeks I had made the decision to delete both my Facebook and Twitter accounts – a scary move for somebody who had been on various social-media platforms since the age of 14 and the golden days of Bebo and Myspace. I had also been using it consistently to promote my freelance writing and artwork, and it had been thanks to Twitter that I secured my first book deal in 2016. Social media was a powerful, inspiring tool and it had been hard to release myself from it – particularly Twitter, which offered such a window onto the outside world. I tried simply restricting my usage but I didn’t have the discipline, which is no surprise when these companies invest millions of pounds into making them as addictive as possible. I didn’t see social media as an evil entity – merely a product of the society we lived in – and while I could see how useful it was for others, I found it was having less and less of a positive impact on my life. Twitter had become an echo chamber of negativity, full of bickering and clickbait, and one morning I decided that, although I might lose a few book sales here and there, I would be a happier person without it.
I also found I had become much less sociable the more I was consumed by social media. This wasn’t simply a case of checking my phone when I was out with friends, though I was guilty of that too. But by being forever updated with what other people were doing, it meant I didn’t
need to bother asking them about it in real life, and I realised there were hundreds of real conversations I was missing out on by always having access to a summarised version of my friends’ lives. As I started to wean myself away from my online persona, I was genuinely excited to see people at the pub, to text and call friends I hadn’t seen in a while and to find out what they were doing or how they were feeling. And as I spent less and less time on my phone, I found time for the other things I loved but that were always being superseded by my phone: I finished knitting the blanket I had started months before, I read more books, watered the plants, watched more documentaries and followed the birds around the garden with my binoculars – all the lovely things we do to break up the more important parts of our day. Slowly, minute by minute, I was freeing myself from social media, something we are told is a necessary part of life, an essential tool, a form of entertainment we cannot live without. But the truth is it’s just that – entertainment. Not love or friendship or art, but just a reflection of those things. And while a reflection can be a wonderful window into our lives, it isn’t real life itself.
By the time we drove to Snowdonia that weekend, the only social-media platform I had left was Instagram, which I found to be a more positive and inspiring online place to spend time. I decided to give Instagram a chance and see if, by having only one platform to focus on, I could be more present and enjoy the real world more. If it didn’t work – if I became just as enslaved to Instagram, just as obsessed with instant, positive feedback and statistics and keeping up a persona that wasn’t real – then I was prepared to give that up too, and give myself back the hours of time I spent on my phone every day. At least here in Wales I didn’t have access to anything online; without a signal I could only enjoy the scenery, the smells and sounds of the mountain, and the hours of real conversation with the man I loved.
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