The Most Beautiful Woman In My Life

This no doubt has been the most difficult years of my teens. I was prepared to move away from home and start my college experience away abroad but it ended up being a disaster. Through these hard times I have learned to be more accepting and as cliché as it sounds I have learned to rise above. I cannot control the people around me, and even though I want to, I cannot make anyone change against their will. One thing that helps me stay positive and remember my goals is my mother, she is the most inspirational woman in my life, and the best role model a girl could as for. After playing volleyball at the University of Hawaii for 4 years and having a very successful volleyball career she moved to California. In California she learned how to paddle, she started outrigger canoe racing and completely fell in love. My mother lived in California for many years before coming back to Canada. Years later she met my father and they had two children, my brother (21), and me (18). After she had kids she stopped paddling, she wanted to stay at home with us (her kids). My mom took my brother and me everywhere! Skating, skiing, bike riding, anything she could think of, and then she worked at night. I spent almost all of my childhood with my mom, my brother races motocross and has since he was four so that was what we did, drive and drive and drive! My father drove over 300,000 km driving my family across Canada and into the United States so my brother could race. The boys had their bikes and motocross friends and I had my mom. 

My parents separated in middle school and after that my mom started paddling again. After eighteen years of raising kids and motocross she was doing something for herself. Now she is doing great! Still racing competitively (all kinds of boats), she is going to the World Sprints for the second year in a row. This year the races are in Hungary and I am going with her to watch, I could not be more proud of her. She will be celebrating her fiftieth birthday this year and she is in better shape than I am which is so inspiring. My mother will always be the person I look up to most, she pushes her self more than anyone I and she would do absolutely anything for her kids. Thinking of her and her success has been one of the biggest reasons I was able to make it through this year.

UofH volleyball team
#7

Outrigger
Second from the left.

Dragon Boat 2012 World Sprints
Fifth from the front.

Dark Beauty

My research paper is about the wonders of the night and how since the beginning of time we have had informal connections with the sky. This is a topic that really interests me because during the night there are a number of beautiful spectacles to see depending where you are in the world.  I plan to talk about the different connections people have with the sky and more specifically the northern lights. Being from a northern country I am very lucky to have seen this magnificent show of dancing lights, and it is something I wish everyone could see at least once in their life. In the movie The City Dark some of the speakers talk about how if we never look up and see how vast the universe is we will become artificially bigger than we really are. I don’t know if there is any research to prove this but I wonder if those cultures that experience the cosmos on a regular basis have any health (physical/mental) benefits. In the film there is information about how irregular work, and sleep patterns can potentially have health risks, and how constant light exposure is damaging to the body. There is no mention of the advantages that a “regular” sleep schedule has, it is inversely implied that if staying up late with too much light exposure, or shift working is bad, than living in accordance to the bodies natural sleep rhythm, in the darkness of night must be better for you. 

Image source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/northernlights

I have been researching the northern lights and have found some articles explaining the science behind them and also how different nations incorporate natural phenomena into cultural identity. I relate to this because in my native country there are many cultural ties to nature like the northern lights, and the Rocky Mountains, these have become symbols of where we come from and who we are. Just like any culture we are starting to loose that connection with nature but there are still many groups, and aboriginal tribes, that feel the connection deep in their soul. Ian Cheney seems to have had a personal connection with the stars since he was very young, and he noticed the differences between the darkness of his childhood home compared to the darkness of his adult city. I also wonder what it takes for others to acquire this passion for the stars, and night time phenomena, for some it’s natural, and instinctively they want to learn more about the night, but for others it is not that easy. Many people will go their whole life thinking there are only a handful of stars in the sky and I am curious, if native city people saw the cosmos as the astronomers do in Hawaii above their own city (like new york) if they too would find this passion to see it again? If more people saw the night in its true glory would more people see the bigger picture, see how small we are compared to this immeasurable universe?

Hopeful Night.

I could not agree with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson more and his opinion of what we are losing from the absence of night, and what we are artificially gaining from it. In the film The City Dark he makes this powerful statement: “You could live your life at home ever looking up … [but] I … submit to you that you’ll be missing a point of view, … a cosmic perspective, because you’ll start thinking of your own environment as all there is. And if that’s how you think about where you are, then it rises to an artificial level of importance to you, whereas, when you look at the night sky and you realize how small we are within the cosmos, it’s kind of a resetting of your ego, to deny yourself of that state of mind, either willingly or unwillingly, in my judgment, is to not live to the full extent of what it is to be human” (qtd. in City dark). What is most important and true about this passage is how humans are rising to an artificial level of importance. We live in boxes, leave for work in our four wheeled machines so early its not yet light out, work all day in bigger boxes until we come home when the sun is already setting. Tired from working all week we don’t even go outside anymore, we watch people star gaze in movies, and pay to look at the stars in planetariums, but rarely do we go out on our own and see them for ourselves. 

The light pollution has gotten so bad in some cities that many have no idea about the wonders of the sky, they are content with the 20 stars the see above because they know nothing different. There are many groups of individuals who study the worlds above us, chasing the universe as if it is escaping. In a way it is, our impact on the purity of night has become so great that it is bleeding into the sky. Scientists and star gazers are searching all over the world to find and hold on to the last few remaining dark places, areas we have yet to contaminate with our constant need for light and power.

Image source: http://www.sdaa.org/images/cityLightsLg.jpg

What is motivating about light pollution is it has a direct and effective solution, not many man made environmental issues have this ability. This is not realistic but for the sake of this example let’s say it is, if suddenly one night we turned off all the lights, every office building, all the street lights, all the homes, and signs, light pollution would disappear. People would see the cosmos, and more importantly animals would see the cosmos. Turning off the lights would not reverse the damage humans have done to nature, but as we know nature is resilient and if we turned off the lights entire species would thrive. If this actually happened, even for just one night it could inspire people. If people never see the stars for themselves they will never have anything to compare them to, but if they do see the stars, look up and feel breathless and full of awe maybe they will become advocated for the stars.

Blinded by the light

We as humans are easily fooled, bombarded by faith and science always looking for something to believe, searching for the facts. It does not have to be that complicated; there is so much on this earth that we will never decode or discover, and light years of galaxy that we will never understand. The reality is that we are small, tiny microscopic organisms that are single handedly destroying ecosystems. Our planet will always be here no matter how much oil we spill or chemicals we burn, this earth will survive. As for humans and all the living ecosystems, they can all be terminated.

We are loosing sight of just how small we really are, caught up in our technology and growth of the human experience. There are many things that help us see the bigger picture such as new life, regeneration such as flourishing growth after a forest fire, death, and even the night sky.  The stars connect us to a world so detached from our own, larger than thought, imagination, and destruction. Through all the economic growth and adaptation we are losing darkness, we can now go days without seeing the stars, and not even notice. Speakers from the film The City Dark discuss all different effects we are having on the night sky and what we are loosing when we can no longer see it. One speaker I related with said, “If our civilization didn’t see the stars and didn’t see how big the universe was, would they come to believe that they’re more important in this much tinier universe because that’s all they see?”. Sadly I think it has already happened, many of the world’s most “powerful” people live in very large cities; these people are making decisions for entire countries. There is an obvious disconnect from the danger of our expansion and nature in such civilization. 

Image source: http://www.darksky.org/assets/media/A1-05.jpg

Sadly the loss of darkness in cities has been a slow gradual process, every time a new parking lot or community is build there is just a little more light in the sky. What is the most troublesome is the idea of children never seeing the night sky in all of its glory, some children don’t have opportunities to leave the city and will grow up learning about the stars from stickers and screens but will never experience the wonder of looking up and seeing millions of starts at once. We are becoming so large that, “our society is kind of taking over the wilderness, but no one is really noticing it”. This that’s does not mean there is no hope, there are many ways to decrease light pollution and in tern benefit our own health and restore nature to its former glory we just need to look past ourselves as a society and make a concious effort to change.

Canadian nature

Growing up in Canada I took for granted the environment I was raised in. Although I live in a big city I am not far from the mountains and the beautiful night sky. When I was twelve I went to an eco camp with my classmates, we drove out to the mountains and stayed for a number of days in large cabins. I can’t quite remember when in the year this was, there was a lot of snow but it wasn’t bitterly cold outside. We spent the days going on hikes through the mountains, playing animal games, doing critical thinking activities, and learning about nature.  I remember one night specifically we walked out to an open field and learned about the stars. Our camp leader pointed out various constellations like The Big Dipper, The Little Dipper, and Orion’s Belt. He also showed us where Jupiter is but I don’t recall being able to locate it.

What fascinated me most about the mountain sky was the Milky Way, in the city you can see all the constellations we learned about but you cannot see the Milky Way. Looking up just and seeing what looks like a millions lights suspended in the sky honestly takes your breath away. It reminds me of being downtown and looking up while surrounded by skyscrapers, it makes you dizzy and puts into perspective how small you are.  I can still remember what it was like laying outside in the snow, other than the chatter from my classmates and lecture from the camp leader there was no sound, no cars, no buzzing from streetlights or appliances.

Picture source: http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3003231



Being in the mountains in the winter gives you the most still feeling, on calm nights you can go outside and even though its cold you want to stay out forever. Sometimes the sky is so big it seems like you can see the curve in the earth, I don’t know if that’s what it really is but it sure feels like it. One of the things I miss most about Canada after moving to Texas is the mountains, being able to look beyond the city and see them everyday spoiled me and I want them back! It does not help that some of my friends work at ski resorts and post pictures online of all their fun work experiences. 

It is little life lessons like eco camp and personal experience that has made it harder to be away from home and the natural landscape. I definitely think that coming to Texas has made me appreciate the beautiful places I have been and where I come from. Even though I like the Texas heat and appreciate that it’s march and I am wearing shorts rather than a ski jacket I will always miss the mountains.

This is the city i grew up in, always sunny and the mountains always have snow (this is summer).

Calgary Alberta Canada

Picture source: http://www.fergie.ca/aboutcal.htm