The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light
August 2025 :
Book Review: The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light
by Craig Childs, Salt Lake City: Torrey House Press, 2025, ISBN 979-8-89092-018-8 hardbound, $24.95 US
Reviewed by Francine Jackson
Everyone involved in the teaching of the night sky is aware that we’re losing it. Overlighting seems to be a given in our society, with more and more housing units popping up everywhere, and people feeling the need to be “protected” by brilliance. The author, Craig Shields, disagrees.
The Wild Dark is in essence, a diary, a nine-day bike excursion with a friend of his, beginning in the heart of Las Vegas, outward, in search of the dark region just over a hundred miles from the city. Each night, he marks the Bortle, the designation from 1 to 9 of brightness. Las Vegas, obviously, is a solid 9, where the normal person might be able to capture 4 or 5 stars overhead. From there, he rides several miles away, where he can count 30 stars: He marks that as Bortle 8.
Each night, moving away from the city, he finds more and more stars, lowering the Bortle scale until, on the last evening, they arrive at Great Basin National Park, an International Dark Sky site, Bortle 1. On the way, they encounter rugged terrain, bicycle misadventures, water deprivation (at least until they come upon a cache they buried beforehand), poisonous snakes, and well-meaning persons wondering what two men are doing riding in the middle of nowhere.
On looking up, the author recalls many of the myths he had learned, from the popular coyote, to the ancient stories his father taught him from many lands, and, while traveling closer and closer to darkness, he is able to understand why there are so many sky legends, from peoples who were able to truly see and appreciate what they saw overhead.
The Wild Dark is a reminder to all of us of what we in cities are missing, of how beautiful the sky really is, and how we should be working to preserve it for those who will come after us.
