SPRING GREEN — On a crystalline fall night, when the stars seem almost within reach, the view from the dark bank of the Lower Wisconsin River is of shadowy bluff and of still water and reflected constellations.
On many such nights, the glowing stars in our galaxy trace a luminous path across the vault of the night sky.
Timm Zumm, of Spring Green, frequently takes groups on outings down the sandbar-filled river. Stargazing with them in the late evenings, he is often amused at how many do not recognize the view of our own home in the universe, mostly because they've never been in a place that is dark enough to allow a glimpse.
• Dark Sky Association
• Lower Wisconsin River
"I remember once when someone said, 'You know the view would be better if those clouds weren't up there,' " Zumm recalled. "I said, 'Dude! Those aren't clouds. That's the Milky Way!' "
Because the wide and wooded valley of the Lower Wisconsin remains one of the best places to see these sights, Zumm is leading an effort to protect the darkness that affords such personal discoveries and lends the river and its environs a special touch of wildness at night.
Sometime after the first of the year, a committee formed by Zumm will submit a proposed outdoor lighting ordinance to the Spring Green Village Board. The group hopes the ordinance will also be taken up by the town of Spring Green and possibly become a model for other communities along the entire 90-mile length of the Lower Wisconsin, between the dam at Prairie du Sac to the Mississippi River.
This would be the first such effort to regulate lighting along the popular recreational waterway though nearby communities, such as Blue Mounds and Mount Horeb, have already adopted lighting ordinances. While Zumm said the details of the Spring Green proposal are still being worked out, most such laws require any new lighting, such as street lights, to incorporate low-light fixtures that direct light down toward the ground. Ordinances usually also include requirements for lower wattage outdoor lights for businesses and homes.
Since the 1980s, more than 80,000 acres of land along the river have been protected as part of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway. Below the dam at Prairie du Sac, the broad river valley is a semi-wild world of sandbars and wooded islands and bluffs. Little development mars the view from the river because of laws that regulate building along the river and require careful screening so that homes and other structures are not visible.
Jim Lattis, a UW-Madison astronomer who keeps close track of light pollution issues, said it makes sense to extend the tradition of protection along the Lower Wisconsin to the skies.
"It's really no different than protecting a landscape or a river valley," Lattis said. "To the extent that we want to protect these places, it's just as important."
And Dave Liebl, a light pollution expert with the UW-Madison department of engineering, said that even in rural areas such as Spring Green and other river towns, modern lighting is becoming more intrusive. He cited the increasing prevalence of service stations and convenience stores with their large and brightly lit canopies.
"The cities are encroaching and taking our night skies away," Liebl said. "We're injecting a lot of unnecessary uplighting into these rural areas that didn't used to be there."
One good thing, Liebl added, is that this type of pollution is relatively easy to fix. The lighting beneath the service station canopies, he said, can be corrected by recessing fixtures and by using lower wattage bulbs.
Zumm has long been involved in encouraging protection of natural resources along the river and is co-chairman of a very active citizen group called Friends of the Lower Wisconsin Riverway. Under his guidance, the group has made educating the public about light pollution a priority.
Peter Livingston, who lives outside Spring Green and is also on Zumm's committee, said the group is trying to emphasize the practical benefits of better outdoor lighting. The emphasis, he added, is on reducing "unnecessary" lighting. Even a farmer can save money on security lighting, Livingston said, by buying an inexpensive shield that directs the lighting down to the ground and, therefore, requires a less powerful bulb.
"Everybody stands to gain by using less electricity," Livingston said.
Livingston added that concerns about safety are often misplaced because bright lights illuminate whatever is in their immediate glow but actually make it more difficult for human eyes to adjust and see adequately in nearby shadowy areas.
Mount Horeb's lighting ordinance has been well received, said Larry Bierke, village administrator. He's had no complaints and said there is a noticeable difference, especially in areas of recent development. Part of the reason people want to live in small towns, he said, is for the beauty of the night sky.
Zumm said that, beyond all the practical considerations, the idea of the dark night sky and its complement of stars is a powerful one that can motivate all on its own.
Indeed, more research is showing that the prevalence of artificial light and the growing absence of dark can have negative impacts on everything from bird migrations to our own health. For most of our time on Earth, humans have been accustomed to hours of darkness. In a recent National Geographic article, the writer Verlyn Klinkenborg noted that, in the early 1800s it was more likely that a traveler to London, the largest city in the world at the time, would smell the city rather than see the dim glow of the torches and candles that illuminated its streets and buildings at night.
Places such as the bluff-lined Lower Wisconsin and the rural roads and villages along its banks are among the few places people can go today to experience a dark countryside and peer into a jewelled sky. There was a time, according to the late Sauk City writer August Derleth, when night was an important part of life.
"The first awareness of night," Derleth wrote in Walden West, "was a world of darkness bounded by a streetlight's glow, the barking of a distant dog, the stars, trees, dim houses. The sense of being enclosed by the night, of being protected, as it were, by the darkness, is ancient."
Perhaps, he continued, the night is "another kind of womb, and the seeking of it another kind of return."
