Magic Moment ~ Magic Memory

Last night when everyone else was in bed (and I should have been) I went outside to look at the sky.  I get email alerts from NASA when possible Auroras may happen.  So I go and look.  I have not seen the Northern Lights in many years.   But I keep looking and hoping.  

My most memorable Aurora Borealis was in 1979, it was my first.  It was a late August night and my guy and I had just hitched a ride.  We were riding in the back of a pick up truck and it was freaking freezing!  We were in the Yukon.  The two women who had given us the ride were escaping to somewhere from something.  The truck contained all their worldly possessions.  We barely fit in the back.  We stopped once to ooh and aah at a giant porcupine.   The stop was fortunate it allowed us to get into our sleeping bags as the ride continued.  Soon after we heard a crackle.  We looked out of our bags and let out a sound that is hard to describe because what we were seeing was beyond words.  The truck stopped and we all got out and danced in the glowing green waves of light.  We tried to keep time with the snap and the crackle.  We all became random.  I think we would have stopped there forever but it was just so cold.  The journey continued as did the lights.  We wanted sleep, we wanted to escape into the dark warmth of out bags.  We could not stop looking...and...listening.  The crackling seemed to flow through our bodies.  It is a sound I will take to my grave.

So last night I was very tired.  I went outside without a jacket, it was cold.  I played with my camera in the dark to "see" what might happen as I turned dials and clicked the shutter.  I pointed at the moon (and I think Saturn...with a speck that was reddish..mars?)  But no matter the labels, the names....the cold, the dark, the fatigue brought me back to that night long ago way out west, way up north. So a magic moment in memory.

Here is some of my play.......