Years ago, a friend of mine taught in English in Japan for two years. She told me that when her students found out that she was from Canada, they got very excited and started talking to her about two things: 1) someone named Aurora and 2) Anne of Green Gables.
A few weeks in, my friend realized that Aurora was aurora borealis, the northern lights, and suddenly, so many conversations that she'd had in the last while started to make more sense.The sum total knowledge of these Japanese schoolchildren has about Canada was the northern lights and a fictional redhead.
I was thinking about this recently because a few nights ago, my husband and I saw the most fabulous display of the northern lights that either of us had ever seen. By some odd circumstance, my husband and I were awake past 9 p.m., happened to look outside and happened to look up. Just when I thought there was nothing more that I could discover about Prince George, I find out that the ol' girl can put on a hell of a light show.
At first, I didn't know what I was seeing because I have never seen the night sky look like that and I was amazed.Soft, green fuzzy clouds were dancing and waving across the sky, not just the treetops, but the entire sky from east to west; the sky had exploded with movement.
The strange thing was, the more we looked at it, the more unreal it seemed. Eventually, we had to stop looking at it because I was starting to feel like an alien invasion was about to occur.It was eerie. Prior to this night, the best northern lights that I had ever seen was in Wells and for my husband was on a trip to the Yukon years ago.
There was a moment when we first realized that we were looking at a most impressive display of the aurora, my first instinct was to get my camera and take a picture.
My second thought was no cheap digital camera ever took a good photo of the northern lights, or, at least, mine hasn't.
In the near future, I will be enrolling in a photography class to hopefully understand how to take a decent photo and what the buttons all mean.
By the amazing power of the internet and the Space Weather Prediction Center (a real website), I learned that the aurora is the result of electrons colliding with the Earth's upper atmosphere. I researched what causes the aurora because I couldn't remember why it happens so I just scienced the heck of an amazing display of Mother Nature. However, even after doing a minimal amount of research on the topic, if someone were to ask me about what causes the aurora tomorrow, I would only have a vague recollection about the atmosphere and something about the sun.
My memory recall for science-y explanations is very poor.
However, if someone who hasn't seen the northern lights before asks me what it's like to see them, I would be able to tell them that it is unlike anything else in the sky.It fills you with wonder and it is perhaps, the only thing that could legitimately be described as awesome. Photos of the northern lights are nice but nothing beats seeing them first hand.
