Sky Dance
Sunday night when I stepped out onto the back deck about 9:30 pm I thought at first glance how odd the sky looked with those low hanging transparent, wispy clouds. You know the kind that waft in about half a day before a stormfront like waves of jet vapor trails?
But these were odd in another way. They weren't all flowing in the same direction, which in these parts is usually west to east with the prevailing winds. Like slim fingers of sheer curtains dancing on the breeze at the window on a quiet afternoon, they reached from the horizon to the apex of the night sky, and all the constellations of stars were perfectly visible through them. And they had an odd, green tinge. It took me a minute or so to catch on.
Orion stood proudly high in the south sky and as my eyes came to rest upon him, I realized with delight that these gaussamer apparations licking the night sky were not clouds at all. In fact, they were Aurora Borealis in all her glory, and she was showing Herself in a way I had not witnessed before this night.
From nearly every point along the horizon, light reached up in delicate vertical wisps to create the effect of a translucent dome between myself and the stars. As I watched from the second floor back deck of my apartment, the intensity of the light grew and dimmed outward towards the top of the dome, like flames of pale green licking the black sky.
Standing there, I was reminded that though I often bewail the cold biting winds that come with the darkest days in the northern midwest, I would not be witness to this wondrous beauty if I moved further south. I looked upward then, with reverance, and tried to fix this vision of treasured event into my memory for a future moment when I might want to recall the pristine beauty of this place I call my home.
Two hours later, I stepped back out to see if the dance continued. Only the stars winking in the clear dark night of November hovered over me, and the pulsing lights were gone. Two hours after that, I had just about finished the images I was working on in Photoshop, and my muscles were beginning to stiffen with a fatigue that called me to rest. One last time, I stepped out the sliding glass doors and looked upward.
There, the show had resumed, only this time in hues of deep red I had only otherwise seen before in the sky at sunset. I grabbed my digital camera and took pictures and video until my memory card filled, but none of them captured the leap and frollick of scarlet light tenderly licking the midnight heavens.
The vision of wonder remains only in my memory now, and I feel blessed by the witness of it.
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