Awed by the Aurora

Musings on the strange magic of the unexpected

Last night this happened above my head. And above the heads of most people in the UK, as you will no doubt have seen via the morning news and social media posts and a flurry of over excited whatsapp messages, posted perhaps at midnight as it was happening in real time.

I happened upon it all by chance. So much more lark than owl, I am not usually up as late as you need to be to at this time of year to be aurora watching. But it was Friday night and two of my three children ( who no longer look like children but will always be so to me) were home for the weekend, with friends and girlfriends in tow. We had gathered for a barbecue in the garden, stealing every moment of this patch of good weather whilst we could. It is an unusual thing to be able to sit outside for dinner this early on in the summer, so the night already felt like a rarity. We drank cocktails in the sinking sun, ate food by dusk and then lingered by candle light. But by ten we all  wanted the containing of being indoors and the warmth of herbal teas and anyway it was past my bedtime. 

I’d had a week of high energy and complex feelings and a lot of sun and I was tired. Nearly too tired to even contemplate going back outside when I saw an alert on my phone that said ‘ High solar activity’ ‘High likelihood of seeing the aurora anywhere in the UK’. I can’t quite believe I hesitated, but I was in pyjamas and my toes were warm and I am not sure I actually believed it. 

But a curiosity I am now grateful for made me reticently tiptoe to the window to look North. And I could see- immediately- that there was a very strange light in the sky, and shadows being cast by something that could absolutely not have been the sliver of a crescent moon I had spotted suspended over our dinner.

All thought of sleep cast aside, I ran down to the huddled youths. ‘The Northern lights are above us,’ I shouted gleefully and they looked at me as though I was mad. Which with jumper over pyjamas, already bed-hair flailing, spouting unlikelihoods, was entirely forgivable. 

But quite used to my crazy proclamations and mad cap ideas, they dutifully followed me outside. 

And we then spent the next couple of hours, gathering increasing numbers of rugs and layers for warmth and a speaker for their ambient music choices ( it turns out that Hermanos Gutierrex with their aptly named Sonido Cosmico is a very good soundtrack to a northern lights display) to watch something I am not sure I will ever forget. 

What we were witnessing, I later read, was the strongest solar flare activity since 2005 across the whole of the UK with the rarity of clear skies to see it.

The lights, or aurora borealis as they are formerly known, are the result of charged particles in the sun hitting the earths atmosphere. When the particles encounter more oxygen they appear the more usual green green, though we must have been watching a nitrogen heavy version because the early greens of due North gave way to pinks - hot at times-  and vivid blues and then ambient purples.

It took some time for our eyes to adjust to anything. And what you actually see via the naked eye is a pale imitation of the dazzling pictures that you capture. Had I travelled at great length and expense to see them as they were last night, I imagine I would have been underwhelmed. There is something so reductive about high expectations. But the Northern lights are something of a rarity in being a natural phenomenon that is rendered better by looking through a camera lens. And via a combination of looking at the murkier versions of each colour with our eyes alone, and then seeing them brought into relief by our camera lens ( like looking into a telescope but far more colourful) , we witnessed something that in some sort of strange and unexpected way, blew me away. The northern lights are a celestial storm ( isn’t that a beautiful phrase?) and the sky was dancing. The longer we stayed the more attuned to the changes we became. ‘There’s more green.’ someone would excitedly offer. ‘That will be vivid pink’, ‘Oh no, they are fading now’, ‘No look its back and it’s now blue’. Sometimes silenced, sometimes animated, sometimes managing nothing more than a chorus of wows we were all captivated by the picture that a combination of eye and photo were searing onto our minds. It felt kaleidoscopic. 

I have always been captivated by the idea of the Northern lights. By a hidden sun somehow casting its rainbows on a night sky. By how trippy and cosmic it not just sounds but is. And I had always planned that I might go in search of it, one day. And maybe even soon- because 2024 and 2025 are apparently a peak in the cycle of solar activity. But that the dance was happening, without warning, without going anywhere at all, above my head and home, added so much weight to the experience. Awe - I realised- is something better found than sought. Is added so much potency by being accidental. 

There is a whole science to awe. Proofs as to its importance, theories as to where it stems from, evidence as to how it makes us feel, how its remit for good is wider than we might think. But it is also quite hard to conjure up with the snap of a finger or the insistence of another. And it struggles in the face of a plan. I think we all know it. It is why an experience much longed for so often falls short, why New Years Eves can sometimes not quite pop, why gathering for a sunset is usually less captivating than having to pull over on the side of the road because one has stopped you in its vivid orange tracks. Though what awes us has something of a universal quality and can be so connective as a result, the experience of awe is actually a private thing. The confluence of something that lies just enough beyond our control as to be offered a magic and an attention to capture it. Like an intimate conversation with a stranger who also feels unexpectedly familiar. It is, like so much that is good in the world, an experience that is born of more feeling than fact. And comes together best at the collision of our curiosity and presence and its own accord.

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I would really recommend downloading this app Aurora Watch and switching on an alert for high solar activity. As I write the sky is apparently dancing above us, though it is too sunny to see anything. But it bodes well for tonight. And whilst this ever increasing summer light will make it harder to see anything over the coming months, the winter is predicted to be a good one as far as the Aurora is concerned. 

And if you would like to read a beautiful exploration of awe, then this book by Katherine May has just come out in paperback and is - in her signature way- a captivating read. She is also speaking on the topic all over the UK and is as good at the spoken word as she is on the page- maybe even better- so worth seeking her out if you can.

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Happy weekend everyone. 

x Nicole