Page 6 - Fall 2011 magazine-1_Neat

by Aaron Leifheit

At this time of year, the Red Rock Canyon critter night shift takes over about 6:30 p.m. Just by luck, I was
walking out of the Visitor Center when the second and the third shifts were exchanging keys to the
evening. As the change was taking place, the few dallying clouds turned the color of cut peaches; and in

the east, over the city, the sky was breaking up into long hazy colors of the rainbow.

The tiny bats who were taking over the skies for the evening danced and darted through the soft orange
light, swirling around light poles to scoop up hypnotized insects. I stood outside for a few minutes and

gazed up at the tiny busy creatures. A dozen people walked up and down the steps, but no one else looked
up at the little brown bats.

Perhaps it is no surprise that no one else looked up to see the circling bats. Although darkness takes up

half the year, we are largely strangers to it. It does not belong to us. Infrequently, we venture out into it,
inside little bubbles of battery generated light. The night is largely a foreign country, a different
civilization, existing unseen and unknown right under our very noses.

Despite this, the night still holds considerable sway over us. Before electricity, the brightest lights in our
life weren’t the television or the lamp, but the moon and the stars. Because of their constant presence in
our evenings, we gave each of them names, histories and then legends. We still had our soap operas,
heroes, battles and love stories, but the moon and the stars played out in the sky above us instead of on a

movie screen.

Because all people were intimately involved with the stars, each culture had stories of the sky. To the
Greeks, the Big Dipper was originally a beautiful woman involved in a mad love affair with Jupiter. When

Juno, Jupiter’s wife, discovered the liaison, she turned cheating Callisto into an ugly bear. Later, just as
Callisto was about to be shot by a hunter, Jupiter reached down and swung her into the sky, stretching out
her tail.

Here is “Lost,” “All My Children,” and “Lord of the Rings” all in one! To certain Native Americans, the
ladle in the Dipper is a great bear and the handle is hunters constantly following him. In contrast, our
modern interpretation of the dipper as a huge spoon doesn’t seem particularly exciting.

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