FARGO, GA. | A star is at the heart of the Christmas story, its bright light guiding three men to a manger.

But 2,000 years later, as the story found in the Gospel of Matthew is told again, as people around the world top trees with stars and sing about the "Star of Wonder," something is happening to the stars.

They’re disappearing.

Or, to be more accurate, increasing light all over the globe is making it harder to see them, rarer to find the kind of night skies that were commonplace for shepherds tending to their flocks.

One third of humanity — and about 8 in 10 Americans — no longer can see the Milky Way. In 2008, National Geographic ran a cover with a photo of bright skyscrapers and a headline that said: "The end of night. Why we need darkness."

A decade later, we have even less darkness.

Last month an international team of scientists announced the results of a five-year study of satellite images. They said that global night light keeps spreading, getting brighter, 2 percent each year.

The scientists noted that while increases were seen all over the globe, some of the largest gains were in places that had long had some of the world’s darkest skies.

But there still are places where, when the sun sets and the sky is clear, you can watch countless stars appear.

The International Dark Sky Association, based in Tucson, Ariz., has stamped spots as dark sky parks, preserves and communities. Many are in the American West. But two of the 54 International Dark Sky Parks are in Florida – Big Cypress National Preserve and Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park – and one is in Georgia.

Stephen C. Foster State Park is on the western edge of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.

Some of America’s darkest skies are less than a 2-hour drive from downtown Jacksonville.

Even in daylight, the city disappears quickly as you exit Interstate 10 and head north toward Glen St. Mary. You pass state forest land, farms and small churches, cross the state line, turn at Fargo (pop. 320) and take Georgia Highway 177 — basically a 17-mile dead-end leading to the park.

It was mid-December, a couple of days before a new moon would leave the night skies at their darkest.

The two-lane road was nearly empty, late-afternoon sunlight streaming through the loblolly and slash pines that frame the entrance to an 80-acre park, tucked next to the 400,000 acres in North America’s largest blackwater swamp.

A couple of hours later, at dusk in one of the shortest days of the year, 10 visitors boarded a pontoon boat for what the park calls a Constellation Cruise.

"I’m glad we got a clear night," said Joshua Snead, an interpretive ranger. "That doesn’t always happen."

Snead eased the boat out a canal, telling people to watch – and listen — for barred owls, white ibises, sandhill cranes and, of course, alligators.

"We’ve been doing night paddles for a while," he said. "On the way out, people won’t see any gators and they’ll just assume there aren’t any. But coming back, we turn the headlamps on and see their eyes. It’s always fun to see the reactions."

Snead, 26, grew up about an hour north of Atlanta, in the foothills of the mountains. He always thought he had dark skies in his backyard. And compared to a lot of places, he did.

But when he graduated from the University of North Georgia with a degree in history and got a job here, he realized just how much the lights from Atlanta had affected his childhood sky.

"All the time I get people who have never seen a sky like we’re going to see tonight," he said. "But you also get some older folks at these programs who remember being kids, living far away from cities."

He cut the engine.

As the boat drifted, Snead explained that we were on Billy’s Lake, the headwaters of the Suwanee River.

The dark water in front of the boat was like glass, reflecting the colors of the sunset against the silhouette of the trees and passing birds.

An owl hooted in the distance, the sound lingering in the quiet.

While waiting for the stars to come out, Snead told a bit about the International Dark Sky Association, how the non-profit works to educate people about light pollution.

"The most obvious effect to us is that loss of beautiful night sky," he said. "But that’s not the most significant loss. It’s the impact it has on living things, from the frogs out here all the way up to us. With all the light, we’re altering the circadian rhythm that everything is developed around."

Part of the IDA mission involves identifying places that meet a certain standard. In November 2016, Stephen C. Foster State Park became the first International Dark Sky Park in Georgia.

Michael Ellis, a former interpretive ranger at the park, led the effort to get the designation. It involved not only an analysis of the park’s skies, but an assessment of what was on the ground. Thirteen street lights were removed. Motion activated sensors were installed on lighting near the park’s cabins.

And the park didn’t just subtract light, it added night programs.

The park routinely has night paddles and night hikes. A few nights earlier, at the peak of recent meteor showers, rangers led a couple of trips, including a midnight paddle. And most Friday evenings, it has a free program on land with telescopes called a "Swamper’s Guide to the Galaxy."

All of this has led to people coming to the park specifically for what happens after the sun sets.

"They associate dark skies with going out West, with expensive plane tickets," Snead said. "They thought there was nowhere to see dark skies here, when in fact there is, and has been, basically … forever."

For an example of the lure of this place’s night skies, one need only look around the boat on this night. The passengers included three men from the Czech Republic, a family of four from Vero Beach, a couple traveling the country in retirement – and, yes, one newspaper columnist whose favorite park memories often involve dark skies.

On the jacket of Ned Wallace, who is traveling the country with his wife, Janet Rogers, is the familiar patch of the National Park Service.

Wallace, a civil engineer, spent the last 6 ½ years of his career working on the National Mall in Washington, helping construct the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial. But he has seen plenty of night skies.

He was born in Utah, grew up in Colorado, spent summers in North Dakota and five years working in Nevada state parks. He and his wife had done the meteor cruise a few nights earlier.

"Without the moon … this is as good as anything I can remember seeing in the West," he said. "It’s not hype. It lives up to its certification."

The family on the boat came to the park partly because of the night skies. Brandie Palot had just visited the Everglades with a friend and was overwhelmed by the stars. So when she and her husband and their two young children came to Lake City to visit family, she wondered if there was a place nearby to see the stars again.

As a bonus, long before it got dark enough to see a bull in the sky, they saw a bear in the park.

A TOUR OF THE SKY

Snead started the engine back up and pointed the boat back toward the east. As it got darker and darker, a glimmer of light remained to the north and the south.

"Can you identify the sources of light pollution?" he said.

"Is that Jacksonville?" someone said, pointing to the south.

"Right," he said. "As the crow flies, it’s 50 or 60 miles. Part of the reason it doesn’t encroach more is there is almost nothing between us and Jacksonville. It’s just swamp and pine plantations."

He explained that the dim light to the north was Waycross, about 30 miles away. But without cloud cover, which not only blocks stars but reflects city lights, it was going to be a magnificent night for stargazing.

Snead cut the engine again. It wasn’t just darker than in Jacksonville. It was quieter, stiller.

The stars had initially appeared slowly. Now they were popping all over the sky.

Snead got out his laser and began pointing out stars and double stars ("Albireo is probably one of the prettiest double stars you’ll see"), constellations and galaxies.

"That’s the Andromeda Galaxy," he said. "It’s a little over 2 ½ million light years away. So we’re looking at light that’s 2 ½ million years old. Who knows what it’s doing now."

A meteor blazed across the sky. Several people hooted. One of the children mentioned making a wish. I figured we already had our wish for the evening: a sky full of stars.

Snead pointed out the Milky Way, saying it’s more dramatic in our part of the world in the summer. When an earthquake struck California in the middle of the night in 1994, some Los Angeles residents called Griffith Observatory to ask about the "strange sky" after the quake. With the power out, they were seeing the Milky Way for the first time.

CLEAR NIGHTS, BRIGHT STARS

Before wrapping up the trip, steering the pontoon boat back to the dock in the dark, Snead noted that this is hardly the only place in this part of the world where you still can see stars. Many places just don’t have the IDA designation.

"I visited Cedar Key a few years ago," he said. "I paddled out into the marshes and they were easily as dark as we have here. I think that would be a great place to have that recognition."

The designation helps preserve dark sky. It makes people aware of it, he said, and care about it.

At this time of the year, we do think about night skies and stars. And while the location of Stephen C. Foster State Park typically is described in relationship to the swamp or small town of Fargo, it’s worth noting that the park’s latitude is within one degree of a famous small town on the edge of a desert thousands of miles away: Bethlehem.

The night skies in Bethlehem aren’t as dark as they were 2,000 years ago. But if you want to see bright stars in the Northern Hemisphere, at a latitude similar to Bethlehem, you don’t have to go back in time. You don’t even need to travel to the other side of the earth.

The stars that appear over Bethlehem tonight reappear over the Okefenokee. And on a clear night, they’re even brighter.

Mark Woods: (904) 359-4212