It could be Iceland. But it's not. The same barren, craggy wildness, but on the other side of the globe. This is Mauna Kea and some of the finest telescopes in the world are up here at the top. We drove to the visitor's center, up above the cloud cover, at 9 thousand feet. It was cool when the sun went down into the clouds, which were below us. The wind picked up. And the sky was ablaze with more stars than I thought could fit into the vacuum of the heavens. Why is it that the places that are least able to support life here on Earth are often the most astonishingly beautiful?

Stumble It!