Under the Stars: A Journey Into Light

by Matt Gaw

Overview

An inspirational & immersive travelogue exploring the power of the natural lights of night. 

Moonlight, starlight, the ethereal glow of snow in winter. When you flick off a switch, other forms of light begin to reveal themselves.

Artificial light is everywhere. Not only is it damaging to humans and to wildlife, disrupting our natural rhythms, but it obliterates the subtler lights that have guided us for millennia. In this beautifully written exploration of the power of light, Matt Gaw ventures forth into darkness to find out exactly what we're missing: walking by the light of the moon in Suffolk and under the scattered buckshot of starlight in Scotland; braving the darkest depths of Dartmoor; investigating the glare of 24/7 London and the suburban sprawl of Bury St Edmunds; and, finally, rediscovering a sense of the sublime on the Isle of Coll.

Under the Stars is an inspirational and immersive call to reconnect with the natural world, showing how we only need to step outside to find that, in darkness, the world lights up. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783965823
Publisher:	Elliott & Thompson
Publication date:	09/01/2021
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	981,604
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Matt Gaw is a writer, journalist, and naturalist who lives in Bury St Edmunds, and is the author of the acclaimed The Pull of the River: A Journey into the Wild and Watery Heart of Britain. His work has been published in the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the Times. He works with the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, edits Suffolk Wildlife, writes a monthly country diary for the Suffolk Magazine, and is a director of the Suffolk Festival of Ideas.

Read an Excerpt

1 Bathed in Moonlight

I stand on the beach with my back to the sea, listening to the flat, rattling intake of breath as the water sucks away shingle. The sun is two-thirds hidden but still not quite set. It forms a thick, burning wedge still clearly visible above the soft, sandy bluff. It is a halo of light below the blush of the lower sky, a giant, bloodred flower that blossoms on the inside of my eyelids every time I blink.
      The sky itself looks as though it is splitting, like an oil stored too long. The heavy sediments of the dark settle, while overhead the colours shift and merge like newly applied watercolours running into each other – reds and pinks, yellows and white. Only in the highest reaches of the atmosphere, where the sun’s rays still shine from beyond the earth’s curve, does the sky remain a brittle, icy blue. I watch as a plane flies almost directly up, its vapour trail a thread of gold that sews the colours together; jetting from the new darkness to the old light of day.
      I check my watch and turn around. It’s nearly time.
      I’ve always loved coming here to the coast of Covehithe, both for its quiet and for its unerring strangeness. Nestled between the genteel promenades of Southwold to the south and the fallen splendour of Lowestoft to the north, it is a place where the mild flatness of East Anglia slowly unravels into the sea; one of the first places in the country to see the sun and one of the first to lose it. At certain times of the month, the same is true of the moon. It’s why I have come here this evening, to experience our most familiar light at night. A glowing changeling, whose light has directed travellers and bewitched all living things – man and moth alike.
      I’ve been wondering if the moon still has that power. In a world of artificial lighting and technology most of us no longer need it for navigation. The generations-old understanding of its cycle, how the waxing and waning light signified both the passing of days and the changing of seasons, is being forgotten. The moon is melting into the background, into insignificance.
      The sea continues to suck and lick. A tern calls, sharp and bidding. Over the horizon of the North Sea comes the moon. First a glow. Then a pale, pinkish cuticle that swells into a weakling light. It continues to rise, an ever-expanding, ever-brightening island until after only a couple of minutes she tears away from the membrane of water, dripping light onto the earth, shining back at the sunken sun. The birth of the full moon.
      She hangs, impossible, a great, cratered kite. Her own seas, the large basaltic plains formed by volcanic activity but once mistaken for water, are all visible, dark against the light-coloured highlands. There, the eyes of the Sea of Showers and the Sea of Serenity, there, the nose of Seething Bay and there, the openmouthed surprise of the Sea of Clouds and the Sea of Knowledge. The whole face of the moon is pinched pink, a result of particles in the atmosphere scattering the light, but it looks as if she is blushing with the effort of her steep climb. She is, as D. H. Lawrence said, ‘Flushed, grand and naked, as from the chamber’.
      I can’t help but be struck by the size of her. Looming and luminous. Although an average distance of 384,400 km away, she seems much, much closer – as if she could be hit and toppled with a well aimed stone. It is a trick of the eye, an illusion that makes the moon seem larger as it sits just above the horizon, the cause of which is still debated.
      It is, I realise, the first time I have ever seen the moon rise, have watched her gather her silvery skirts and jump. Perhaps her ascent has always been masked by houses, by hills and trees. But also, I suspect I haven’t really looked. The moon, as large as it is, seems impossible to ignore, yet I have done just that. My experiences have been limited: a brief glance at a bony crescent while putting out the bins; a glimpse of a first quarter lurking in the car’s rear-view mirror. Sometimes there have been daytime sightings too, pigeon-egg pale. A fragile, dark-eyed stop-out.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction ......................ix
1 Bathed in Moonlight ............... 1
2 Under the Stars ................. 29
3 Night Terrors ................... 67
4 Burning Bright .................. 97
5 Caught in the Light ...............125
6 Living in the Dark ................153
Acknowledgments.................193
Bibliography ....................197
Endnotes .......................201
Index .........................203

Editorial Reviews

"Gaw finds wonder in the dark... The stand-out chapter for me was his getting lost in the Woods of Cree in absolute pitch black. Deep primordial horrors arise and make for gripping reading... This is a powerful and valiant plea for us all to see that, unlike in science fiction, light isn't always good." - BBC Countryfile Magazine


"Under starlight and in moonlight, in the depths of the dark forest and on the streets of a city centre, Gaw goes on a nocturnal adventure to discover how light pollution disrupts and affects our own mental wellbeing, and the wellbeing of wildlife, too. En route he re-discovers the beauties of meteor showers and moonlight meanders, and encourages us to go on our own midnight adventures. Lyrical and lovely." - The Simple Things


"Matt Gaw shows once again that he is one of the most inspiring of our young nature writers, with a highly original journey into darkness and night" - Stephen Moss, naturalist and author, Mrs. Moreau's Warbler: How Birds Got Their Names


 "Passionately argued and perfectly crafted... Under the Stars is a timely and inspiring manifesto explaining how 'by lighting our world sparingly, carefully... we can achieve something that would improve human health, protect wildlife, and help us to reconnect to the landscape and starscape at night'." - The Countryman

From the Publisher

Luke Wright gives an enthusiastic performance of naturalist Matt Gaw’s celebration of his experiences with the night sky. Wright’s fervent tone is a good match for the author’s deconstruction of darkness, which venerates luminescent suns and stars, and urges an end to earth’s light pollution. In poetic chapters, Gaw explores nighttime in six locations in the UK, including London, Suffolk, Scotland, and the Isle of Coll. In the section set in Coll, Wright’s narration enlivens the author’s vivid images. His voice makes listeners feel as if they are sitting with Gaw, his wife, and two children under a pitch-black sky, watching shooting stars and the bright spray of the Milky Way. E.S.B. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2022 - AudioFile