For the last seventeen days I have lived, perched on the fiords, two hundred kilometres into the arctic circle, blanketed in twenty hours of darkness and a little dusk. I have chosen to deliberately slow my spinning to a third of my tropical chase and face a numbing cold in this monochromatic world of black and white, dark and light. I am surrounded by white snow clad hills merging into dense. low, soft grey skies. Swatches of barren trees lace the lower slopes in black filigree. An occasional red cabin dots this vast silence with colour and warmth - and a light burns within. The fiords lap five meters from my door, in jade, prussian blue, olive to navy - depending on the moment. Dashes of pale gold shine and silhouette the dark horizon - our hint of a sun that never rises. This is a strange world.
I am here chasing an old dream - to see the auroras - the colourful lights that light up the arctic skies in winter - raining down in sheets and swirls of dancing light. I remember teaching about this - three decades back - fingering in awe the colour photos in textbooks of basic astronomy. I know that more is known than is mysterious when charged particles from the solar wind are captured by Earth's magnetosphere and are funnelled to the poles in arrays of mysterious light and awe inspiring beauty. The ancients thought these were their ancestral spirits, dancing.
I saw these lights - in shades of mostly green, with an occasional hint of pink, swirling across the skies in furling-unfurling and sheets of chiffon, dancing to the solar melodies - gliding across swathe of Milky Way, reflecting on water, hills, us. People here say that they can feel the solar wind during periods of high auroral activity. We had several of these, yet I am too much of a novice to recognise the direct breath of the sun from the winds of this earth which surround me.
We stood with our faces to the skies, surrendering to this grace - knowing we have been blessed to be thus awed.
I am here chasing an old dream - to see the auroras - the colourful lights that light up the arctic skies in winter - raining down in sheets and swirls of dancing light. I remember teaching about this - three decades back - fingering in awe the colour photos in textbooks of basic astronomy. I know that more is known than is mysterious when charged particles from the solar wind are captured by Earth's magnetosphere and are funnelled to the poles in arrays of mysterious light and awe inspiring beauty. The ancients thought these were their ancestral spirits, dancing.
I saw these lights - in shades of mostly green, with an occasional hint of pink, swirling across the skies in furling-unfurling and sheets of chiffon, dancing to the solar melodies - gliding across swathe of Milky Way, reflecting on water, hills, us. People here say that they can feel the solar wind during periods of high auroral activity. We had several of these, yet I am too much of a novice to recognise the direct breath of the sun from the winds of this earth which surround me.
We stood with our faces to the skies, surrendering to this grace - knowing we have been blessed to be thus awed.
