One of the best moments of my life.

Late august 2016 I was making my way through the fjords of Greenland, the scenery alone was breath taking… but secretly I’d hoped for just a glimpse of the famous Aurora Borealis! Although the northern lights were out of season, the serendipitous nature of this crazy life had meant that I was travelling with a Solar physicist friend. Each day, out of curiosity she had logged onto a satellite simulation of the latest solar storm activity (to this day she is the only person I know who has used satellite internet to log into another satellite!) … and low and behold, just as we were sailing away from Greenland… a huge storm was in progress on the sun… leading to a high chance of Aurora activity!

We tried not to get our hopes up…

My cabin phone rang at 1am…. The message was clear: “Go outside! The Northern lights are out!” Haphazardly piling on every layer I could find for warmth I headed outside into the freezing night… and stepped into a world of fantasy made real. The sky erupted for hundreds of miles above my head. Pinks and greens galloped across the inky black night, illuminating the seabirds and distant mountains from above, making them glow eerily. The colours rolled in ever-unwinding waves, ebbing and flowing like ribbons.

 

Directly above our heads, the kaleidoscope of the solar storm seemed to take on the form of a huge angel-like figure… as I watched, the wings unfurled and, with a brightness that had to be seen to believed, cannoned overhead looking as though the angel was spreading its wings to heaven. No wonder the ancient Scandinavian peoples thought the Gods lived in the starry skies!

The Northern Lights are the remnants of solar storms that hit the earths atmosphere. At different heights different gaseous particles react, creating different colours, green for oxygen (the most recognizable and prevalent) and red or blue for nitrogen. As they move with the solar wind, the patterns they make are like shafts and waves racing across the sky: hypnotic and beautiful.

I must have stood for hours, fingers numb and face frozen from the constant wind. My neck ached from gazing upward and my breath clouded around my face. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I could write pages on the way the lights made me feel… the way they awoke the dreamer and the ancient strains of humanity gazing at the stars… but I think I can best describe it in the following sentence:

To feel as close to space and as close to the earth as possible in a single moment.

To believe in Magic.