The first thing to mention, before the beauty of it and the effect of it, is that it felt like a rare privilege, something that most would not get to experience or see.
I first saw it when I was rinsing the mop bucket on the back deck. I’d been told the conditions in which the Northern Lights were most likely to appear – cold, clear nights. It’s obviously been getting colder and colder, but clear nights are surprisingly uncommon. They’re not unheard of, but the skies are most often overcast, and the phenomenon seems to occur above the clouds. So when I noticed that the stars were out, I began inspecting the skies. And sure enough, I spotted the first band of green vapors over the shores to the east of us. The bands are ribbon-like, curving across the sky, sometimes seeming to approach or fall further into the distance. The base is the most visible, vibrant part, meaning that it is illuminated most brightly and that light fades upwards from the horizon. I was surprised by how dynamic the northern lights were, like a ribbon moving in a breeze. They brighten and dim from one second to the next. And then, in the most intense moments, there is also a sort of vertical movement, as the light dances and shifts in strands that stand upright, reminiscent of the way that water shimmers. The spectacle might be similar to a thick mist, constantly shifting while illuminated from behind. That said, such a description doesn’t quite capture the effect, as the vapors seemed almost to be illuminated from within. At one point, I could see the vapors rippling from the horizon and passing directly overhead, swirling like a vortex above the boat and rising infinitely upward.
And the affect of this, which I tried to describe to you over the phone, was a kind of melancholy. There was a lugubriousnss to the movement of the light, a meandering, sort of lumbering march across the sky. The dynamism of movement meant that they could appear or disappear from one second to the next, but, when observed, the movement seemed slow. Coupled with that was the fact that the vapors seemed to slowly evaporate skyward in a constantly rising mist, the vertical light rising towards the heavens and vanishing. The green color was simultaneously vibrant and solemn, and seemed barely willing to announce its existence within the mist. And yet, the grandure and majesty of it gave it an eternal quality, as if those bands of light had been engaged in that march long before we arrived and would continue it long after we go.
And of course, the context for this was a freezing night over the Alaskan tundra. I know that those lights are visible in other parts of the state, over other landscapes. But there, in the frozen tundra, over the freezing ocean, in a place that was so inhospitable that it nearly remained frontier but for the intrusion of humans digging away at the frozen land (a local man told me that Christian natives had to bury relatives using jackhammers to unearth the permafrost). It was a lonely place, barely inhabitable by humans, animals, and even plant life. And there’s also something sad about the landscape in that it was a sort of reminder of how much humans have intruded into and exploited the natural world, as if nature had been forced to retreat to this most remote locale, looking back with a sort of mournful melancholy. Completing the ambiance is the shriek of the un-greased belt of the shoreside hopper, which emits a sort of melodic whistle when in operation, a sound like a dozen apparitions whistling in harmony. And so the ghostly lights marching across the sky, already haunting in appearance, haunting in context, come to seem like the final departure of nature, forced to retreat skyward, to some other realm as the humans continue to encroach and intercede. And that is the best way I can describe the melancholy affect of the northern lights.
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