Something small stuck with me after someone had something to say the other day about Missouri Heights. They said that people who live in Missouri Heights at night still turn their house lights down to a minimum so as to see the stars above in all their brilliance.

God, I hope that’s true.

Can it be true that a small outpost of people in the United States of America in the 21st Century would care so much as a group about the natural world that they would adjust their habits just to see the beauty of nature? It almost seems too good to be true, and when you hear a turn-of-the-century story like that you have to think that it won’t last. I’m not pessimistic by nature, but this is one of those moments when “progress” as we know it–the obliteration of the natural world–is all but inevitable.

I had all but forgotten about the Missouri Heights story until I was driving back from Grand Junction Friday night. I do this every month at least, for family reasons, and sometimes I find myself charging down the Interstate when it’s as dark as tar outside. Those are the times when you can see the drills most clearly–lit towers like Roman candles that grow and shrink depending upon their proximity to the highway and your path. In Parachute and Rifle, they seem so close to the local lit-up communities that they could be telephone towers. And they’re everywhere, of course, the main cause for the population explosion along the Interstate and the economic boom that comes with such progress.

Every time I drive by I grow more angry about the drills. Lately what I say to myself is no mas, the universal call for surrender–don’t let us drill any more drills anywhere near the Roan Plateau. And then I think of Missouri Heights, where I hope the people still turn the lights down at night, the better to see the beautiful world we still live in.