The Sky We Know

Do you know the saying? “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” It’s one of those old sayings that I love, they have so much truth to them that we often overlook.  Recently I have thought of that old saying pretty often. I am not sure if that happens more once you reach a certain age or not but none-the-less, it has preoccupied some of my thoughts lately. Change will often do that to you. I’m not saying it’s always a bad thing, just something that requires getting used to.

I was listening to one of my favorite radio stations, NPR, the other day and the conversation revolved around drones. The story focused on new legislation regarding their regulation that just was enacted. They have been all the buzz, sorry, over the last couple of years with so many news reports about the good and bad events surrounding them.  Some have crashed into people’s homes and property, or they came precipitously close to restricted air space with a far greater chance for disaster. While this sounds dire, the chances of something bad happening to most of us by drones are pretty remote. The new rules are an attempt to prevent some of the crazy stuff you see from happening, at least very often hopefully. The little devices invoke our curiosity and speak to the geek in us who love a new gadget, if it’s electronic and new we have to have one; it has been this way for the better half of a century. There are actual important and handy uses for this technology that will add to the greater good and that is where we hope it stays.

This gets me to my real point, the world will change and sometimes we don’t notice until it is too late. I am a self-proclaimed romantic; I yearn for the good old days and remember times gone by with fondness. I fear the day when our skies, whose beauty we often don’t notice or take for granted, will be so forever altered that they will lose what makes them special. One day there may be so many drones buzzing through the air that you won’t be able to look up and enjoy the peace and beauty of the sky art that is constantly changing due to man’s obsession with his tech and the businesses that will require them. It wasn’t too long ago that the skies were threatened with so much pollution in certain areas of the U.S. that this terrible reality was real life; thankfully for our willingness to regulate the pollution this has been greatly turned around. Over the years I have also feared the dawn of the flying car, thankfully something that hasn’t come about. Besides the fact that people are terrible drivers on one plane, the idea of letting most people drive at multiple levels is frightening.  

One day our sky may be polluted with so many of these drones, even the sky will stress us out.  Another sad part may be that one day everyone will be used to it. Much like the light pollution at night, many that live today have never known a time when they could be outside at night and easily see twice to ten times as many stars that are visible today. There is something magical about the sky at night; because of this I think we have forgotten our place in the universe and some of our natural curiosity about everything.  In a world centered on us and our importance, we have failed to know our insignificance and the greater importance of everything around us. I pray that we don’t know a future when the day time sky is as embattled as our night time sky. So as a reminder, if you read this and you care, take a moment to look up and commit what you see to memory, the sky we have today may be gone tomorrow. It isn’t all doom and gloom, for my part I may get one of those drone eagles that snatches drones out of the sky. What a wonderful idea.