Phenomenal by Leigh Ann Henion

Author:Leigh Ann Henion
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-29T17:52:21+00:00

• • •

When we meet up later that evening in a wood-built, heated dining room, I tell James that as much as I’d like to see the northern lights, I’m also hoping to hear them. Every year, thousands of people report that they’ve heard the aurora. I’ve met nearly half a dozen witnesses myself, all in the space of a few days. What they claim to hear isn’t the impossible-to-make-out waves of infrasound that have been recorded in the aurora at high altitudes. No, they claim to have been witness to the yet-to-be-recorded or scientifically explained, totally audible phenomenon that is the lights’ signature song. There is ancient precedent for this. The Sámi word for the aurora is guovssahs, which roughly translates as “the lights that make noise.”

James is skeptical. “I’ve spent thousands of hours with the aurora and I’ve never heard it before,” he says, temporarily distracted by a young man who’s come into the dining area. James watches as the guy whispers to a group of diners, who rise from their seats. Swedes aren’t known for loud proclamations, and James knows what this might mean. Even when you’re not outside, you have to be on alert if you want to catch the lights. He gets up and motions for me to follow. We’re joined by an increasingly wide stream of people as we rush toward the doors. I have never felt more like a stereotypically loud American in my life, but I can’t help but shout to a curious-looking couple as we pass their table: “Northern lights!”

We burst outside to find a crowd already gathered. Above, the aurora is tingling toward the bottom of its arc. The lower sections look like pink fingers dancing across an invisible piano. They extend down in various lengths. Pinky finger. Pointer. The upper stretch of the slender solar storm is somehow more delicate than I’d imagined it to be. It’s a wisp of color. Stars are visible in the background as it slithers and twirls, shrinks and spreads. The arc it traces is, I realize, the curve of earth. This sky show is revealing the contours of the very planet on which we stand.

James shouts: “Look! Pink! That’s about as good as it gets.” The top of the aurora is glowing green, but the animate bottom of the arch is pink as Archer’s nose after a day of playing in snow.

“Amazing!” someone shouts from the crowd that’s gathered outside the restaurant’s doors.

“I should get my camera out,” James says, shivering in his fleece vest. In the rush, he couldn’t find his outer jacket, but he knows the aurora doesn’t wait. It can disappear as unexpectedly as it arrives. “This is the best I’ve seen in weeks and weeks,” James tells me, the aurora fluttering like a glowing curtain in a celestial breeze.

The aurora’s tingling pink energy dances, pounding out a visual song. The lamps around the restaurant can’t compete with its power, its undeniable brightness. It is revealing the edge of our atmosphere.

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