Light Me Up Again

Resisting numbness, seeking delight, and the power of shared awe (plus a last call for Sandra Beasley's workshop!)

I started getting notifications from an iPhone app that monitors readings and predicts aurora conditions in specific areas when we moved to Castleton. Up until that point, I’d lived in areas filled with so much light pollution that it seemed pointless. Of course, I could have driven (like many do!) to the dark sky areas of Virginia when the predictions called for it, but it seemed to make more sense to just wait for the times I’d visit dark sky areas like Vermont, the Upper Peninsula or Madeleine Island. I’ve only seen the aurora once (a faint white curtain wavering on the horizon on Madeleine Island), for all my seeking them out.

And even when we moved to Castleton, inside one of the few dark sky areas on the East Coast, my phone camera seemed incapable of capturing the brilliance people around me were posting.

I lost hope.

Tuesday night my phone started buzzing again. I listlessly, if somewhat dutifully, started looking at videos to try and help my phone “see” the lights. They were all things I thought I’d done, but I went outside, and took a test picture facing north, with the lights of the house still glaring behind me. A pink cloud hovered above our barn. It was 8 p.m. A coyote yodeled from the field across the way. Something big crashed through the woods in alarm when I called to Dave to turn off the lights. I’d try again!

The first blurry image, complete with house lights so bright they’re reflecting the barn onto the leaves.

I came back outside, and turned a little to the northwest, trying to figure out where the cloud started - and lo and behold, a much richer red appeared on the resulting picture. By nine o’clock, I was nearly in tears. The reds! The stars! I’ve put the pictures below, aimed to the northwest and west. The lights shifted and transformed to deeper and deeper shaders of red above our dear Bessie Bell mountain. Most of these were taken from the sidewalk where I paced, too excited to go inside and put on shoes.

You can see our house lights on the grass, the offending streetlight, the reflective barn. But you can also see the stars and the lights themselves. Red and green and defying the clouds which started to roll in around midnight, when I finally went in.

Never quite visible to the naked eye, but such deep reds, purples and greens! WOW!

On Wednesday, I thought I’d drive up to Skyline if the forecast was even half as strong. I started reading about the science of the apps, that you can’t just look for a high Kp, that the Bz readings must dip low enough that the magnetic field of the solar wind connects with the earth’s magnetosphere. *More info here on that. Lots of Icelandic pages on how to find the Northern Lights in Iceland. Far fewer on those in light polluted areas, aside from “go somewhere as dark as you can get, and start by looking north.”

It looked good, but I told myself that it was unlikely I’d see anything further this week. Just the same, I could feel a shift inside as I got in the car. In a hard to miss moment of complete synchronicity, an old favorite came on - Ingrid Michaelson’s “Light Me Up.” I hadn’t heard this song in a couple of years (I literally have 2000 songs that shuffle in and out of this playlist, and this one’s been on the list since it first was released in 2016.) I put it on repeat, trying to unpack why I was tearing up just after the first verse was underway. “I want to see you with my eyes.” she sang and I got chills. While I love this song, it’s never quite had this kind of effect on me. I realized I’d been feeling hopeless, and numb, symptoms that the onslaught of negativity and oppression were getting to me. But just being ABLE to hope again was itself an exhilarating freedom. A privilege.

I made it through 6 or 7 plays, and then I was at the pull-off on Skyline Drive. It was still light, and there were hours to go before I knew whether or not I’d get any images of the Northern Lights this time around. I took a couple of pictures of the valley as the sun set, and sipped hot tea from a thermos. I barely felt the cold, tho the wind whipped around me, and was so strong that my sturdy Kia shook. It was wonderful to hear laughter in the dimming light, and see people patiently setting up for something beautiful which may or may not happen. Hoping and acting as if the good thing was going to happen, together was its own reward.

And then what we hoped for finally arrived.

Keeping hope alive, <3

Sarah

PS: I hope you’ll join us this weekend for some shared inspiration at Sandra Beasley’s workshop, An Appetite for the Page on Sunday from 1-4 p.m. Eastern. *Sliding scale. Scholarship seats are available! <3