I believe that we need to preserve the earth.

I go to summer camp every year. It's a sleep away camp in the mountains, and also in the middle of nowhere. To give you a general sense of the layout, the Dining Hall is in the middle of camp, and the boys cabins are behind it. The girls cabins are across a small field, over a creek and, across another, bigger, field. The girls' cabins are in two rows, one facing right out onto the field, the other row is behind the first one and is in the woods a little more. Now there is a creek running through all of the camp. It separates the front drop off area and the back area with all the cabins and such. At the drop off area there is a pool, a gravel parking lot, a giant field of tall grass with a path carving through it, and a small farm. The farm consists of a pig pen, a duck pen/coop, a bunny pen, and a big, fenced in field with a small barn with alpacas. The path through the tall grass actually connects to a path through the woods, across the creek, and to the boys cabins.

One night after dinner me, my counselor, and the girls in my cabin, all decided that we should take the (long) scenic route back. The sun was already down, and because we were in the middle of nowhere, we had the best view of the stars for miles. We decided that instead of going the normal route back to our cabin we would go behind the dining hall, past the boys cabins, across the creek, through the woods, through the field, to the parking lot, and through the main entrance to camp. As we passed through the field of tall grass we stopped, turned off our flashlights and just admired the gorgeous night sky. It was like someone poked a million little holes in the sky, you could see the milky way, mars, everything. And I swear I saw a shooting star. You don't see stars like that at home, you rarely see anything where I live.

That was about two years ago, and I still remember the cool nights, and the peacefulness of it all. But last summer my mom, dad, sister, and I were driving back from the pool and the sky was orange. For context we had stayed late at the pool and it was dark when we left. We drove past a large field, I looked out on the horizon, and the sky was a sunsetty shade of orange, but it wasn't just the sun setting, because it had set a while ago and if you look at the orange bit, there is no sun.

This is important because it shows how bad pollution is. A lot of people think that the only types of pollution is air and water pollution, but it isn't. Light pollution is a problem too. Light pollution is when a large settlement area has so many manmade light sources that it lights up the sky, and the night. That is why baby turtles crawl towards towns, and cities instead of the ocean, they mistake the light coming from houses for the light of the moon reflecting off the water. This is also why you can't always see the stars at night. The light reflects off the sky, and makes it lighter.

I think that not many people  have really seen the stars like that, and even fewer people compare it to a normal night sky. The natural night sky should look like the one I saw at camp, beautiful and un ending. 

Did you know that by 2050 the earth will be so damaged that it will be impossible to fix. I am not religious and am neutral about the existence of god. But if he does exist then I think that he gave us the earth as a gift, a place of peace, and safety, and what did we do with that gift? We destroyed it, we mined out its ores, and minerals, and built machines that release harmful gasses into the air, waste and trash into water and large amounts of unnatural light into the sky. We need to do something, now. This I believe.