I couldn't agree more, OS.  It seems almost criminal that, at our age, we need to travel to the wilderness to re-live night-time skies that were quite common in our childhood.

I did a September trip to Burntside Lake a couple years back with some wonderful QJ friends.  Night-after-bug-free-night, campfire sparks and tales drifted skyward into a Milky Way which, mystically and majestically, reappeared for us, as if out of the memories and fresher air of our youth.

There was naught but the mechanical procession/intrusion of man-made satellites to remind us that those Times, indeed, have mostly passed.  Nevertheless, I am ever-grateful for those Dark Skies and the flickers of jaw-dropping memory and Hope they brought to Life again, even if only for a few nights.  A glimpse of what-once-was can add meaningful perspective to our assessment of what-now-is... and such glimpses are rare and ever-more fleeting these days.

A Dark Sky Sanctuary is a GOOD idea... a church for wilderness souls.  The notion makes me mindful of words of a QJer named "Akula" whom we haven't heard from in over a decade.  In my favorite-ever QJ post, he wrote: "By the light of a simple campfire, I can see all the way to Heaven." 

I second that emotion... and Old Salt's praise of Dark Sky Sanctuaries.  They are well worth the effort.

Jimbo   8-)