September 21, 2002

Northern Lights to Northern Shrikes

We who live in southern latitudes, we who choose our state of residence by our chances of wearing shorts at Christmas, do forfeit certain pleasures for our temperate climate. Fall in south Texas, where I live, is a dramatically understated affair. Summer sticks with us well into October, when leaves suddenly turn dirt brown and fall to the ground. I am convinced that our trees drop their leaves out of frustration or exasperation rather than in response to day length or a change in temperature. One day they reach a point when they are simply tired of carrying foliage (like parents with children who outstay their welcome).

We never see snow, so forget the winter sports (if you don’t count winter league softball). Coats are necessary only a few days a year, therefore women who enjoy wearing another animal’s pelt are relegated to air-conditioned malls and concert halls. Snow tires or chains? Not on your life.

Yet while I do not wish for a colder climate, a recent trip to Vermont reminded me of just what we do give up to live our lives in balmy bliss. The evening of September 7 Mary Jeanne Packer, her twins (Dewitt and Sarah), and I traveled from Poultney to Rutland to test a new Mexican restaurant. Now you might ask what fool Texan would suffer through a Mexican meal in the land of Ben and Jerry, maple syrup, and granola crunch. Easy; a desperate one.

After a passable meal (I even tried the mole) we began the trip back to Poultney when I noticed a subtle glow out of the corner of my eye. Poultney is far from any major city, and none of us could immediately explain the luminescence that gradually came to dominate our view. In a few miles we exited the freeway, parked on the edge of a corn field in the broad Lake Champlain Valley, and let our eyes adjust to the darkness before trying to determine the source of the radiance.

As our pupils widened the sky erupted in a firestorm of reds and greens. Red shafts bolted up to the zenith and beyond, green veils rippled in the solar breeze, and nebulae pulsed like neon veins driven by a cosmic heart. No drug-induced fantasy could approach the bliss we each felt as we were swept into the vortex of one of nature’s most exquisite pranks, the Aurora Borealis.

Northern Lights are virtually never seen as far south as Texas, although periods of intense solar activity (such as the present) may spark auroras well south of their traditional boreal haunts (Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia). Technology now allows us to predict when they may occur (see the list of aurora sites below). On the evening of September 7 I just wanted to go from door to door, screaming at my Vermont hosts to get out of their houses and into space.

My relationship with nature extends beyond "watchable wildlife," beyond the obvious (mammals, birds) to the surreal (the aurora). I like Northern Lights to Northern Shrikes. I am intrigued by any manifestation of nature that will draw us into the outdoors and away from this virtual world that walls us from reality. On the evening of September 7, in Poultney, Vermont, no one with a pulse could deny the magic that danced across the sky.

The Photos

The photos included with this article were taken by Brian Larmay, and are used with his generous permission. Please visit Brian’s website at http://www.astrobri.com to see more of his exquisite photography.

The Aurora Web Pages

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/weather/aurora/

http://www.spaceweather.com

http://www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/auroras/

http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Curtis/curtis.html

http://www.bowfort.com/~adec/

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