Were
those the Northern Lights? – or: Aurora musings, a work in progress
Five months and seven years after coming to
Oban, I've at last seen the Northern Lights with my own eyes – from the top of
the hill behind my house. As I walked up, the ground ahead began to fall away. In
the first hours of last night, wide beams of light seemed to reach up into
the clear sky above an unusually bright northern horizon.
Up there I stood in wet grass beneath a
dark sky glinting with thousands of diamonds. The air was still. Behind me lay the
glare of Oban town, the humming pulse of a ferry in the harbour, the roar of
cars...
Orion had risen to the south-east. I tilted my head right back. The Milky Way above me guided my eyes to Ursa Major. From it I got my proper bearings: at five times the distance between the two stars at the rear of the heavenly beast, I found the Lodestar that for millenia has helped people find their way across the northern darkness. Northward I looked.
By the houses to the east at my back, a fox
barked and barked again. Its rasping voice came nearer, dipped away behind the
big house to my right, grew louder briefly and then faded away as the creature fled
to the rough ground beyond. Between my spot and bare-topped, round-crowned
Battleship Hill, several cars roared past on the A85 below, speeding
towards the villages nestled on the sea shore at the foot of mountains.
Due north, above the dark horizon, lay an
almost blinding, blurry band of silvery light. I had to close my eyes. The
afterglow was strong. As my retina continued to send a large lentil blob of
brightness to my brain, I struggled to make sense of this new sight.
Open-eyed again I saw more broad beams of
light rising up towards the stars. Slowly, ever so slowly, the beams – faintly
tinged with green? – shivered across the horizon from north-west to north-east,
moving closer together and drifting apart as they went.
Was that silvery sheen really the aurora borealis? Where was their bright-green hue? And did I really see faint rainbow specks
or had my eyes played a trick on me?
Suddenly, to the west of Battleship Hill,
it looked as though it was raining light. Or as if several more long, tall slivers
of shimmering light were rising up to the stars. The hill stood in their way. The
spectral glow grew fainter. The deep band of silver, though, remained like a
blanket above the horizon, flowing higher then descending again, like a huge
beast breathing in a restful sleep.
Just such a beast gathered itself in and
came to rest on Battleship Hill, a cloud dragon whose long toothsome jaws devoured the stars. And the silver-green light lay still on the
horizon.
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