Book + Beverage: Craig Childs’ Night-Sky Quest Meets a Local Agave Sip

THE BOOK

The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light
By Craig Childs

Bestselling author Craig Childs lives off-grid in Western Colorado. His newest book delves into the diminishing darkness of our night skies, exploring human history of gazing skyward and finding meaning — not to mention beauty.

Yet today, because of light pollution, only 20% of people on Earth can see the Milky Way.

Childs delivers a dazzlingly tragic image of ourselves — a people so in love with light we’re killing the dark.

Childs reminds us that all living beings exhibit positive phototaxis, the natural movement of an organism toward light. 

”Everything from lizards to insects to plants to manta rays to plankton to humans are drawn to the light,” he says. “Birds wheel toward any city, spinning over spotlights and street lamps as if the maps in their almond-sized brains can’t stop saying, turn left, turn left, turn left.” 

This kind of imagistic writing that has me returning to Childs’ books. These are campfire stories — infused with flesh and blood language sparking against the night. It’s science writing at its best.

Especially keen is his olfactory perceptions. One day the air "smells like cold herbarium,” another like “a freshly minted coin.” Old cow dung smells like “burning grass,” fallen leaves like “rotting citrus” and a hot can of beer smells like "the underside of a hay pile.” 

Language-loving poets, wildlife adventurers, scientists and nature lovers of all kinds are drawn to Childs’ books. We know we won’t get detached reportage, but a living, breathing science. 

“Light is hungry and has to be told to stop,” Childs tells us. 

Equipped with a hand-held device which measures ambient light from the night sky, Childs travels from Vegas to the depths of the desert. The idea is to go from a Bortle 9 to a Bortle 1 reading on the scale. To travel this distance by car would take a mere few hours, which would defeat the purpose of measuring gradual darkness, so Childs and his companion ride bicycles from the Strip to the heart of the desert, a grueling journey of about eight days. 

We’re also taken backward in time — to the Desert Archaic cultures to the people of the Pleistocene to a contemporary homeless guy on a back road to the dried-out shell of a desert tortoise — all of whom have lived under the same skies. The night sky, Childs tell us, is a birthright. 

It’s a journey well worth taking and one brimming with hope. One of the researchers Childs interviews tells him, “Unlike many environmental dilemmas we face … the problem of artificial light is a relatively simple fix. It is a pollution that vanishes with the flip of a switch.” 

At the heart of this rich and surprising book is a way forward, a reminder of our shared humanity, the pleasure of the well-turned phrase — and a mirror as big as the moon.

THE BEVERAGE

Telluride Distilling Agave

Craig Childs himself recommends pairing The Wild Dark with a potent glass of tequila.

We recommend Telluride Distillery’s Agave, perfect as a sipper and delightful as a mixer. Sourced from a raw, organic agave from Jalisco, Mexico, terpenes are added for flavor and aroma. The distillers boast their tequila is aged in medium char oak, producing a slightly sweet, herbaceous flavor.

Originally published in the fall 2025 issue of Spoke+Blossom.