A few hundred miles of desert two-lane at night, no radio nor moon nor competing traffic to interfere with the cascade of thought, and the dark folds itself in around my pallid headlamps. The high-beams have developed a disconcerting tendency to go out. I drive with the lows these days. I have no working light on the instrument panel save the cheery, comforting red glow of the Check Engine indicator. The dark is near-infinite.

Driving out of the Coachella Valley I felt an odd inversion. I likely know as well as I can the threats to the dark, and yet I imagined the blare of city lights below me a beleaguered thing, hemmed in by a pool of void where the unilluminated desert pressed up against it. It was a relief, this momentary sympathy for the urban carcinoma.

At a party in the desert this weekend I sought The Raven. It was dark. Astronomers from the city had brought a spectacular collection of glass and mirrors. I talked for a while with archaeologists and hydrologists, activists and desert rats, and she had wandered over to peer at distant nebulae. I found her in the crowd but it took some doing, some listening, and she was for some time uncharacteristically silent as she marveled. (It was an utterly appropriate “oh, that’s awesome” that tipped me off.) We went together to a big scope aimed at Jupiter, settling in toward the western horizon behind Wild Horse Mesa, and we gaped at it tennis-ball sized with shimmering stripes of cloud, the Galilean moons arranged prettily on either side.

“All those worlds,” I said as The Raven stepped away from the eyepiece. “Yeah,” she said, awed. “They’re all yours,” I said. “Except Europa. Attempt no landings there.” “What?” she replied.

As we stood at fireside I heard a gasp from another partygoer,and looked up. A brilliant fireball sliced the sky in two, cleaving the heavens across the full width of the valley we were in, little sparks coming off the pink-tinged trail. People looked up from the scopes. “What?”