THERE’S something wonderfully freeing about standing in an English field in June, long after the last cuckoo has cried itself hoarse and the swifts have turned in for the night, staring up at the heavens like some latter-day druid.
The modern Briton, of course, wouldn’t know a star if it fell on his head – too busy doom-scrolling through Twitter or binge-watching some Netflix drivel to notice that the universe has staged its nightly light show without him.
But for those of us who still possess the humility to look up, who can tear ourselves away from the blue glow of our digital overlords, June offers a celestial spectacle that puts our terrestrial nonsense into rather humbling perspective.
Let’s be blunt: we’ve ruined the night.
Not content with despoiling the countryside with wind turbines and solar panels, we’ve smeared the very heavens with our garish, wasteful light. Our towns and cities piss illumination upwards like a drunkard missing the urinal. Shopping centres, motorway junctions, and those retina-scorching security lights suburbanites love, installed, one assumes, to deter both burglars and any passing wildlife that still dares to dream of darkness.
The result? The Milky Way, once the birthright of every child, is now invisible to 80 per cent of Britons. To see it, you must flee to the last bastions of darkness: the Northumberland moors, the Welsh Marches, or the Scottish Highlands.
For those who escape the light-polluted wastelands, June’s night sky is a veritable feast. The Summer Triangle (Vega, Deneb, and Altair) dominates the heavens like a celestial triumvirate, while Cygnus the Swan glides down the Milky Way. There’s Scorpius, low on the southern horizon, its red heart (Antares) pulsing like a warning beacon. Our ancestors saw in it a deadly scorpion; today, most Britons would mistake it for a Starlink satellite.
Modern man, bless him, expects the universe to deliver its wonders on-demand, in 5K resolution, with subtitles. The night sky, being refreshingly indifferent to our demands, does no such thing. Stargazing requires patience, a concept as alien to the TikTok generation as a handwritten shopping list.
Your eyes need a good twenty minutes to adjust, time enough to reflect on how civilisation has progressed from worshipping the stars to ignoring them. A red-filtered torch helps (white light is for philistines), and while binoculars will reveal Jupiter’s moons, there’s something to be said for learning the sky the old-fashioned way: with your own two eyes and a healthy dose of wonder.
Dress warmly. June nights can be deceptively chilly, a fact known to anyone who’s ever shivered through a midsummer barbecue. A flask of something fortifying is advisable (whisky, obviously). Take along your wife, if you are lucky enough to still have one, so you are not mistaken for a snooper or perv.
Our fear of the dark has become pathological. Village greens are lit like football stadiums. Farmers bathe their fields in light brighter than a supermarket car park in fear of rural criminals. Even in supposedly remote areas, the natural night is being eroded by the creeping glow of ‘progress’.
There are, admittedly, pockets of resistance. The Yorkshire Dales and Exmoor have been designated ‘Dark Sky Reserves’ – a bit like nature reserves, but for something that used to be free. A few councils have even started turning off streetlights after midnight, though one suspects this has more to do with budgets than astronomy. The government is not as bright as it used to be!
In an age when we can summon images of distant galaxies to our phones, why bother with the faint stars overhead?
Because a society that never looks up is a society that has lost its sense of place in the universe. There’s a profound humility in standing beneath the same stars that guided Nelson’s ships and Shakespeare’s sonnets – a reminder that our current obsessions (be they Meghan Markle, or the latest rent boy arson) are passing trifles.
There are practical benefits, too. I’ve navigated home from a pub more than once by the North Star, a trick that would doubtless baffle most millennials, whose sense of direction extends no further than Waze. And for modern anxiety, that gnawing, screen-induced restlessness, there’s no better cure than lying in a June meadow, tracing constellations until the mind quietens.
One of these June nights, when the elderflowers are in bloom, do something radical: step outside. Leave your phone indoors. Look up. The stars are still there – cold, indifferent, magnificent. They’ve outlasted empires; they’ll outlast our current bout of collective madness.
This article appeared in Country Squire on June 4, 2025, and is republished by kind permission.
