Lights in the night
My Children Can Never See the Sky Like I Did
Does change equal progress?
My brother recently sent me a video from his phone. It’s evening, from the porch of the cottage they rent each summer. Past the dark shadows of low pines, blueberry bushes, poison ivy, and over a line of dunes, you can see the Atlantic.
I’m familiar with this view from when he and I were young, from when my parents first rented it for our summer vacation. But now, in my brother’s video, I can see a row of about a dozen lights that flicker red and white on the horizon, like Christmas lights.
They are pretty in their way, animating the quiet and blackness of the summer dusk. They are safety lights on massive offshore wind turbines being installed as part of a 62-turbine array on roughly 130 square miles of ocean off the coast of Massachusetts, USA.
I’m conflicted about how I feel about them, and I mull what progress means to me.
When I think about twinkling in the night sky, I’m reminded of being a child at that cottage. Our family’s holiday coincided with the Perseid Meteor Shower, the annual passing of Earth through comet debris. Before bedtime, on clear nights, we’d lie outside on deck chairs and look up at the sky to see all the shooting stars.
