Aurora Borealis

The National Park Series; The Spirit Of Alaska; Randy Petersen, composer

In October of 1987, while settling down for the night in my dorm room, I received a telephone call from my friend R. claiming that she and her sister had heard on the radio that the northern lights were coming our way in just a few minutes. I had never seen the aurora borealis before. So, I grabbed my coat, jumped in the Fairlane and headed to R.’s house to pick her and others up. We had to get out of town to see this phenomenon. The lights of SDSU and Brookings would obscure the display. So we drove north on Highway 77 about three or four miles and pulled over on a little rise at the entrance to a cornfield. The moon had a date with Japan, so we had dark skies with nary a cloud. Fog covered the lower lying areas and we stood about two feet above it.

Six of us stood in the dark, staring up into space, wondering what we would see. After ten minutes without seeing anything, we almost got in the car to head back into town when a glow appeared in the north. And it got bigger. And bigger. And bigger still. And in just a few moments, Mother Nature had pulled a luminescent blanket over our heads to set the stage for her late night show. A green radiance imbued the northern half of the heavens with a clear circle in the center of the sky. Suddenly, from all directions, waves of green light let loose from the horizon, arching across the kaleidoscopic welkin toward that pellucid ring of stars at the center of the sky, then launched straight up, slipping the confines of the earth, crossing the threshold into the realm of outer space through an exit door in the firmament.

This experience and mental visual-print has loitered in my memory for many years. The unwonted yet spectacular display, I knew, occurred more often in Alaska and Canada. My sister K. had worked at a lodge in Glacier Bay in Alaska during the summers from 1982 until 1985. She told us many times about the different colors in the northern lights.

In 1994, the Star Odyssey spent the entire summer season traveling between Vancouver, BC, and Seward, AK. I enjoyed a beautiful five-month trek through the mountains and glaciers of Alaska. But the aurora borealis didn’t show up until September. The officers extended our stay in Seward, on our last pass through, long enough for the crew to have a late night bonfire, cookout and a stop at a picturesque cliff overlooking the ocean to the west with the – wait for it, - northern lights sparkling like fireworks to the north. The colors made all the difference; I was truly thrilled. But they didn’t make the impact that my earlier rendezvous with astronomical wonder had made.

The radio, a 20^th century invention, told us that the northern lights were coming for a visit. We’ve all learned a little bit about what makes the aurora borealis do its thing in science class. So we stood watching, in utter astonishment, one of nature’s greatest extravaganzas, feeling completely safe and secure that the physical effect on us and the ground on which we stood was completely benign. And yet, one hundred and fifty years before, the Native Americans must have experienced either glee or terror – virtually nothing in between. The gods don’t put on an array like this out of downright indifference.

I remember noting the silence on that October night in 1987. We had no wind, no rustling grass, no cornhusks whispering in the breeze, no explosion in the air to coincide with the pageantry above our expressions of stupefaction and gaping mouths. Only. Ab. So. Lute. S I L E N C E . . . .

Mr. Randy Petersen wisely provides soundtrack for the Northern Lights on this CD. It doesn’t recount the spectacle in the sky. With its cry of the loons and its lapping of the water on the stones, it celebrates the stillness, the tranquility in which we stand that makes the breath-taking awesome, makes the stunning imposing, makes the staggering sensational. Makes the glorious majestic.

Credits: To my Aunt J., who likes the aurora borealis as much as I do.