"The Miracle Was Here"

"The trip calmed me a little. I was reminded that, to outworlders like Adzel, the miracle was here. Light glimmered in a million earthbound stars across the hills, far out over the great sheen of Bay and ocean; often it fountained upward in a many-armed tower, often gave way to the sweet darkness of a park or ecocenter. A murmur of machines beat endlessly through cool, slightly foggy air."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 184.

Three senses: light: murmur; coolness.

We need accounts of Earth as seen by aliens like Adzel or Aycharaych. We can get clues of what this might be like by visiting other parts of Earth. An Indian immigrant to Britain, found a hedgehog in his garden, rang the nearest zoo and told them that he thought that one of their animals had escaped. He had had no idea that such animals were native to Britain.

In Germany, I saw a chess board laid out on the ground in a public park and men playing, using two foot high chessmen. I had not known that that happened. In the US, I was astonished to see TV presenters suddenly advertising products. I was asked, "How do you expect them to earn any money?" I expect them to be paid an adequate salary.

Aycharaych tells Flandry that he had secretly visited a few graves and viewed a few art works on Earth. How did our environment appear to him?