Star Search
August 11, 2005

As I write this, Santa Cruz is choking in the deathgrip of a particularly noxious bout of morning and evening coastal fog. It's our typical June Gloom—except that it's now August.

It's hard to get out of bed in the morning when there's no sun, especially in summer, when life is supposed to be one long, sunny episode of Baywatch. What color is the sky? White? Call me in October. With wet, depressing grey damp cloaking the coast all morning and every night, how can we possibly reclaim the title of Surf City from Huntington Beach? (Huntington Beach? Oh, please. Redondo Beach, maybe…)

Art Boy loves the fog, having grown up in the literal melting pot that is Chicago. Me, I'm basically a reptile: let me lie on a rock in the sun, and I'm happy. But lately, I've had an even bigger grudge against the fog than loss of sun. I've been craving the night sky. I miss the majesty of the shape-shifting moon on her monthly rounds, and the comforting pattern of the stars on their dance across the sky. I miss seeing what the planets are up to while the earth sleeps, sparkling aquamarine Venus twinkling at stodgy old Jupiter, with volatile Mars, glowing like an ember, in hot pursuit.

I miss them like old friends. When I look out at the night sky and see nothing but vast, dark emptiness, I get lonely and despondent. There have been lots of scientific studies on the effects of sense deprivation in mammals. I've got star deprivation.

Remember those heartbreaking science films we had to watch in high school? Newborn monkeys were taken away from their mothers at birth, and forced to grow up in sterile, empty cages. Deprived of their mother's touch, the baby monkeys grew up surly, withdrawn, suspicious, the future Unabombers of the primate world. Even baby monkeys given an inanimate sock monkey to snuggle up to turned out at least marginally less psychotic. I have not yet started to actually rave (well, no more than usual), but I may do something drastic if I don't see the stars again pretty soon.

This has been going on longer than our current fog spell. I started missing the stars in June, when we took a trip to northern Europe. Our first stop was a centuries-old mill house on the river Yonne in the Burgundy region of France. The forested area far from any city lights should have provided optimum stargazing conditions. But in a part of France as far north as Minnesota, the sun didn't go to bed until about 10 pm, followed shortly thereafter by us.

It was charming, at first, having non-stop daylight. (Although slightly less charming as daytime temperatures soared toward 90 degrees.) We arrived in Bern, Switzerland, on the hottest day of the year, and the warm weather, short nights, and neverending street life illuminated by giant lights outside our hotel window further alienated me from the nighttime world. But I never realized how weirded-out I was getting from so much light until we got to Sweden, to visit Art Boy's brother and his family.

They call it the land of the midnight sun, but that's a misnomer. In the Swedish summer, there is no midnight. There's no night of any kind, at any hour. You can wake up at 3:30 in the morning to slink off to the bathroom, and it's broad daylight outside. It's showtime, 24/7.

Here in Santa Cruz, we love the sun. But our sun goes offstage at a sensible hour, never any later than 9 pm at the very height of summer. Our sun obeys that cardinal rule of showbiz: always leave 'em wanting more. While night takes over, our sun retreats to the Green Room, scrubs off the pancake, has a drink, takes a nap, relaxes. He's fresh for his next entrance at dawn, and we love him all the more for it. If the sun was up at all hours, like an egotistic comic who doesn't know when to get off, trust me, we'd get sick of it.

But the Swedes can't get enough of their summer sun, day and night. And you can't blame them; they only get about six to eight weeks of sun in the whole year. The rest of the time, it's as cold, dark, and gloomy as, well, a Santa Cruz morning in June. When their all-day, all-night sun finally arrives, the Swedes have to make every minute count, trekking ever farther northward to campgrounds and summer cottages to get even closer to the radiating orb. To me, it's like that episode of The Twilight Zone where the blistering sun is always up, scorching the planet, but the Swedes don't see it that way. For them, daylight is its own reward, and they're grateful for every minute of it they can get.

Me, I was looking forward to starry, starry nights out in the yard here in Live Oak. But no such luck, with perpetual fog oozing inshore like an oil slick to obliterate the sky every single night. I feel unmoored, deprived of the stars for so many weeks. Can somebody at least throw me a sock monkey?