I Saw the Aurora Borealis Above My House

What a year of wonders it has been!

Honestly, the total solar eclipse alone would have been enough of a celestial wonder to sustain me at least through the rest of the year, but I have been spoiled with riches, because last weekend there was also the Aurora Borealis! ABOVE MY HOUSE!!!

And it turns out that the Aurora Borealis even works when there are clouds!

I mean, it definitely would have been better without the clouds, but thank goodness it still works with them. It might have even made it more spectacular in some ways, because never before in my life have I seen parti-colored clouds at night.

I used a long exposure for these photos to pick up all the Northern Lights that I could, so these photos are for sure brighter than we saw in person, but still, it was pretty bright! It wasn't so bright and distinctive that if I'd wandered outside having no idea what was going on I'd be all, "Ooh, the Aurora Borealis!", but it WAS bright enough that I'd definitely have been like, "Um, WHAT is wrong with the sky?!? Why is it pink? Are we experiencing a nuclear attack? Do we now have aliens?"

Without the long camera exposure, it looked more like this:

See? If you walked outside at 10:00 pm and you didn't know what was up you probably wouldn't immediately clock Northern Lights, but you would know SOMETHING was happening. Aliens, probably. Perhaps nuclear war. So it's nice that I did know what was going on, because instead of ducking and covering I could then be all, "Family! Come hither to experience magic and wonder with me!"

The family *kinda* experienced the magic and wonder with me for a little bit, but their patience for magic and wonder is far inferior to my own, I'm sorry to tell you. They were like, "Cool, pink sky! Someone tell Nick Drake! [two minutes pass] ...welp, now we've seen the Aurora! Bye!" and then they went back inside to their various unmagical and wonder-free pursuits. 

I, however, was going to be damned if I let a second of celestial magic and wonder pass me by, and fortunately, that's why god invented the lawn chair! It was also the perfect evening--cool and breezy (darn those clouds!), the frogs from the swampy backyard bellowing mating cries to compete with the distant sounds from the drive-in next door and the even more distance sounds of the racetrack a few miles away, early enough in the season that I didn't have to swat mosquitos--it was just about as good as springtime in Indiana gets.

The photo above is my greatest triumph--there's a little bit of camera shake, oops, but there's also the Aurora Borealis lighting up the Big Dipper, and in the bottom right of the photo I even caught a meteor!

I still want to see some proper, cloud-free, way-up-north Northern Lights one day, but these particular Northern Lights were a delightful, unexpected, probably once-in-a-lifetime-in-Indiana gift that I'm super happy got tacked onto my year.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!