.
Low in the western sky, competing for brightness with electric lights, like a green snake, came the northern lights. Those white streaks, looking like shooting stars, are real stars, streaked as my tripod sank slowly into the snow. (exposure time 2 seconds, f4, focus infinity)
I have never taken pictures like this before—hands freezing, can’t
see the camera, watching fast-moving fingers of Arora borealis as they move toward
me from west to east with twists and sweeps of green arms. 
You can find more crisp and vivid find pictures on the web, but standing there in the cold night, immersed in this moving panorama in the sky, was so breathtaking that I forgot how cold my hands were. Gloves don’t work with the camera, so I hurried back inside to see if any of the pictures turned out. After seeing they did, I was back out into the cold, spectacular night.
I almost forgot to show you pictures, taken yesterday, of the mountains and the hike on Healy Mountain View Trail in Denali National Park.
On the trail up to one of the minor peaks, not nearly as high as Denali at 20,310 feet, trudging in fairly solid snow, spruce trees tend to lean over in shifting permafrost. It’s the way buildings used to lean over and roads heaved, before we learned to build like trees live, letting the earth do what it will, while we barely survive.
Michael Angerman has kept a map during this long trip, showing all of the places where I spent the night. Please view his map at: Michael's Map You can pan zoom to see more detail or more area as you choose.
Thank you, Sharon, for sharing. This was an experience of a lifetime!
ReplyDeleteIndeed it was. I have seen the Aurora from the lower 48 states, from Minnesota and Wyoming, but never like this. My pictures do it little justice. Most of the pictures on the web have been doctored beyond reality. It has to be seen, felt, and some people say heard. Yes, my niece and many others say they hear it. That goes against science, but it's so emotionally moving that I don't dispute.
Deletecold follows the night
ReplyDeletefreezing hands grasping the light
sky's intriguing gifts
And a gift it was indeed! After so many nights of looking up, finding the big dipper, and Polaris nearly straight overhead, with no aurora, I almost thought it takes imagination. But it's real! The aurora is Real! Science explains it as Paul (see his comment below) explains. But to be in its presence is a awe I have seldom felt. To reach out and shake its green hand. To listen, but not to hear its voice. Maybe tomorrow morning I will.
DeleteShe resonates in nature, awed by water, whimsical about rocks, in love with flora and fauna, prostrated by solar eclipses, knocked sideways by aurorae, dancing with the cold.
ReplyDeleteShe has mental models of the geometry of Earth and Sun, of a wind of protons screaming along one's magnetic field and then another's, of absorption of their energies by high-up and tenuous blankets of atomic oxygen, and of quantum leaping resulting in vast, silent, shimmering and curling curtains of gem stone colors overhead - and yet the direct experience of it, in standing under, is to comprehend.
The physics is awesome and marvelous, on a level with one of my favorite lines by Jack London:
"The cold of space smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled before it."
Paul, Thank you for this, not only scientific, but linguistically inspiring description. I didn't know you write such prose, and yet stay away from our poetry groups. This kind of science-art merger is what we need more of.
DeleteAwesome pictures!
ReplyDeleteI saw one also & thought it was the end of the world
& I remember my parents singing that song in night clubs
eons ago & so here's my contribution....
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/kreyser-avrora-%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%B5%D1%80-%D0%B0%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B0-cruiser-aurora.html
"Aurora"
The northern city sleeps in calm aura,
Over the head low skies are so close.
What do you dream of, cruiser Aurora,
When over Neva the morning dawn glows?
Maybe again you see in rain clouds
Fires of cannons and flashes offshore,
Or night patrols in black navy jackets
Strike their fearsome steps as before.
Steep stormy waves and gray raging weather,
That is the fate of ships yet again,
Fates of the ships too are like bird feathers,
Often resemble the fates of the men.
Seaside expanses breathe windstorm blows as
Lightning strikes crisscross stormy night skies...
What do you dream of, cruiser Aurora,
When over Neva the dawn's on the rise?
Alex, What a great Russian poem to share with me. The aurora brings out poetry, even in a skeptic like me. I will go out tomorrow morning, well before daylight, and see if my friend Borealis is there with his irresistible charm, with another word. Perhaps he comes from Russia before visiting here.
DeleteMagnificent reward Sharon for all your work of traveling... to be swept up by the great arm of Mother Nature like a star in solar wind...as when the green is gone from ground, because of white all sealed under, smow swallowed, she takes to art on canvaz sky and wields her thickly green laden brush in splar wind driven words... she sweeps us up sky borne power dream stroke we are all overtaken by the night wind's gesture scattering swoop the great green earthbird of the northern sky carries us all ln her back...
ReplyDeleteSo poetically said, Kathabela. This swirling green brush painting in the cold night is truly a poetic art of nature.
Deletele rayon vert... you know what that is, do you... le rayon vert, the green ray :)
ReplyDeleteLucky who has the patience to wait for it
ReplyDeleteI am very lucky to have seen it, Toti. Two weeks with hardly a glimpse of clear sky, and on the night it was clear, the Aurora, which is not always there, came to visit.
DeleteBreathtaking to see a glimpse of what you saw, to hear from your most excited words the magnificence of impact this experience has had upon you. The you who has had so many interludes with Nature and the phenomena that exists therein.
ReplyDeleteThe poetic offerings from Paul and Kathabela are as astounding as your own.
I could feel a strong momentum within your words as I read them so I read them fast, much faster than you would speak them because there was this tremendous excitement that instructed me to do so.
Starshine sings You Light from Universal Heart and together with you, looks to the skies to that which is not only seen, but heard through the receptive listening heart!
I was astounded, Junnie. Pictures of Aurora borealis never astounded me. Being in its presence did. I wish my pictures could convey that, but they fall short. "Light from Universal Heart," union of sun's wind, earth's magnet, and me out there in the cold in the middle of it all. Very exciting
DeleteI am borealis drifting
ReplyDeleteabove the earth.
Tendrils that reach out
to you
but never touch.
I am sun breathing
Deleteon you
awaken your magnetic field
feel me