Thore­au tells us that when he learned the Indi­an names for things he began to see them in a new way. When he asked his Indi­an guide why a cer­tain lake in Maine was called Sebamook, the guide replied: “Like as here is a place, and there is a place, and you take water from there and fill this, and it stays here: that is Sebamook.” Thore­au com­piled a glos­sary of Indi­an names and their mean­ings. It was like a map of the Maine woods. It was a nat­ur­al his­to­ry. The Indi­an names of things remind­ed Thore­au that intel­li­gence flowed in chan­nels oth­er than his own.

On the clear­est, dark­est nights thou­sands of stars are vis­i­ble to the naked eye. In addi­tion to stars, there are oth­er won­ders avail­able to the care­ful observ­er who is far from city lights — star clus­ters, at least one galaxy, neb­u­las, the Milky Way, the zodi­a­cal light. But even on the best of nights the typ­i­cal urban or sub­ur­ban observ­er sees only a few hun­dred stars, and none of the more elu­sive objects. We have abused the dark­ness. We have lost the faint lights.