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Dan

Uses of Silence

One September night I camped on a creekless patch of plateau a little above timberline. I cleaned my dishes as the light dwindled, made tea from melted snow, and sipped. A sliver moon shone somewhere far away, but not here. Ten stars became five hundred, then fifty thousand. I stood …

The Human View of Stars

Night after night, last August in the Wind River Range, I had a fantastic sky full of stars, and it set me to thinking. One question that came up was the difference between stars and planets. Modern astronomy has one answer, and the old astronomy has a completely different one. …