Musings

One of the first ‘modern’ novelists, Joseph Conrad, wrote a novel in 1902 titled ‘The Heart of Darkness’ which was the plagiarized basis for the Vietnam era movie ‘Apocalypse Now’. For Conrad, it existed deep in the jungles of the Congo, and within the mind of its Mr. Kurtz, who had set himself up as a God to the natives. Like the deranged colonel in the movie, Kurtz’ dying words were ‘The horror---The horror........'

For me, it occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My fellow Airmen and I sat in our B-52 bombers, lined up nose to tail on the taxiway, with engines running, full of nukes and ready to rumble, at Clinton Sherman Air Force Base in Oklahoma (now a civilian airport). To us, the end of the world seemed just hours away (it was, in fact).

We refueled the bombers with the engines running (a very dicey proposition) and rotated the aircrews at eight hour intervals. Of course, all communications with the outside world were pretty much shut down, but I managed a cryptic call to my parents in Utah to let them know that they had better head for the bomb shelter. My coded message was ‘please give my telescope to my brother.’

My parents knew that this 4” reflector was my prize possession, and that I was convinced that the end was near. It was the only situation imaginable in which I would have parted with it.

Astronomy has always been a bit of a passion for me, and was one of the things that drew me deep into the desert wilderness of Utah’s Colorado Plateau. There, you could see stars by the millions with the great swath of the Milky Way stretching from one horizon to another.

I never imagined it to be ‘The Heart of Darkness’, but today I discovered that it is indeed. A prominent feature, the Natural Bridges (carved from sandstone by wind and rain), is formally recognized as one of only two places in the world to be designated as Bortle 2 on the international darkness scale of astronomy. Bortle 1 locations can only be found in the middle of the ocean; again, one of the big draws for me to the islands of the South Pacific.

Today, I consider the ‘Heart of Darkness’ to be within the confines of Interstate 495 that encircles Washington D.C., but that is the subject for some future post. A new Bortle 2 designation is about to be conferred upon a location in the southwest of Scotland, and the inhabitants should be proud. I have always enjoyed traveling in Scotland, and this only reinforces my view that it is one of the most beautiful places in Europe.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Natural Bridges, Utah, I offer the photo below for your consideration:
The dry streambed is 2,000 meters above sea level