Sanctity of a Dark Sky
“Sometimes there’s a part of me
Has to turn from here and go
Running like a child from these warm stars
Down the Seven Bridges Road.”
On the banks of the Monongahela River lies the crippled Clairton Coke Works, a 392-acre mill that has transformed coal into coke since 1916. My grandfather arrived in the United States from Calabria, Italy, by way of Ellis Island and began working in the blast furnace, building our family’s origin story on the streets of Clairton, Pennsylvania—a thriving steel town until the mid-1980s.
Early mornings, I’d wake to the smell of coffee percolating on the stove and immediately taste the acrid smoke from the mill at the back of my throat. Every flat surface in our town was coated in a fine layer of black particulate that turned white porch rails, window sills, and playground equipment an ashy gray.
I often sat beneath the canopy of a massive oak that skirted the cinder alley beyond our property line. There, the air felt cleaner, filtered through leaves, and the world seemed a little less chaotic.
I was only seven, and I could already appreciate stillness.
When we were younger, my husband and I strapped on backpacks and roamed trails east of the Mississippi—from Alabama to Maine. Filtering water, tent camping, and treating blisters with duct tape felt like pure adventure. But after I battled Lyme disease, we traded our tent for an Airstream.
Real rest unspools something tightly wound inside me, and it happens best off-grid.
In 2023, shortly before our first grandchild was born, my husband entered the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race. Friends of ours own 30 acres in Fairplay, Colorado, and the climb to their property begins at the end of Breakneck Pass Road—aptly named. They offered us their land so Dave could acclimate to the altitude before race day.
As we towed our Airstream up to 10,200 feet, I noticed the aspens shimmering with leaves. A little farther up the dirt road, they were just beginning to bud. A few hundred feet higher still, the stands of aspen stood stark and beautiful—naked in their paper-white bark, without even the promise of bloom.
In the background, The Eagles harmonized on “Seven Bridges Road,” but I turned off the radio. The music interrupted the holiness of the moment. There was a quiet sanctity as my husband navigated tight turns and occasional 20% inclines.
The climb out of the aspens and onto open land was breathtaking. Above the tree line, the boundless sky stretched wider than anything I had ever seen.
It was majestic—utterly silent except for the wind moving through the trees.
As the earth tilted away from the sun and darkness settled in, stars spilled across the sky. We watched their tails streak through the night, brief and brilliant at the end of their celestial lives.
This wasn’t an official Dark Sky Sanctuary, but for us, it was.
“The solution to an overbusy life is not more time. It’s to slow down and simplify our lives around what really matters”
Under the stars, in the absence of artificial light, I’ve found something real. I’ve felt both small and powerful at once. I’ve become aware of my pulse, recognized that many of my stressors aren’t truly stressors at all, and rediscovered the importance of unplugging—of resting in the natural light of the world.
Peace-
Clare
