CHARGED PARTICLES

The northern lights are an atmospheric phenomenon that's regarded as the Holy Grail of skywatching. Stefanie Waldek, Daisy Dobrijevic from Science.com

I’ve never been interested in seeing them.

It’s not that I would not want to see them; I just never thought about going out of my way to see them. The thing is, I’ve never really been all that interested in the night sky. Chris and a gaggle of friends would spend hours out on the oval at night, gazing up at the sky during our time at USAO. I think I tagged along a couple of times, but I found the whole experience to be uncomfortable. Laying on the ground with the night chill and swatting away mosquitoes while trying not to fall asleep was just not something that appealed to me. I’m not good with late night things. The Jenny Lewis concert I attended recently was a rare event and a struggle since she didn’t hit the stage until around 8:45 and my bedtime is 9:00. I’d pay extra for my favorite bands to put on matinees. To truly experience and see the night sky, one must wait until the sky is at its darkest and that happens well after 9:00.

When word went out on Friday that there was a possibility of seeing the Northern Lights in the Kansas City area, I was mildly interested. Then Chad sent me a screen shot of an email from the ham radio weatherman group he follows (of course he does) and it was all about the solar storms that were predicted for Friday and Saturday. So I replied to Chad with “ask the ham nerds about times.” and started to think about digging out my tripod. Friday evening rolled around and Michael and the Cabbage went to a school lock-in for the night. I FaceTimed with Amani and futzed around the house. I stepped out onto our front porch to look at the sky and my view was blocked by trees. I shrugged and went to bed. Then I woke up the next morning and my social media was filled with pictures people had posted of the Northern Lights.

Photographer Cindy experienced some serious JOMO.

Michael and the Cabbage came home from their lock-in and slept most of the day away, leaving me to my own devices and I just kept thinking about the pictures I had seen of the auroras. It was such a rare event to happen this far south, not that I’d consider Kansas City as ‘south’. I was just under the impression that if I were to ever see the Northern Lights, I was going to have to travel to Alaska or Iceland. I knew from Chad’s ham nerds that the solar storm would be even bigger and the auroras even stronger that evening. By the time Michael got up I knew that I wanted to go out and try to photograph the auroras for myself. The latest aurora map predictions said the peak time for seeing the lights would be between 11:30 and midnight. It didn’t take Michael much convincing to drive us an hour north to Smithville Lake. We started to set up in a parking lot, but the view wasn’t great. Also, as soon as I opened the truck door, my weirdo magnetic attracted another lights viewer who made a direct beeline to us with unsolicited advice. We quickly took a short hike to a more isolated area near the water.

Then we waited.

We sat on the ground, eating popcorn and swatting away little bugs while looking at the sky, all the things that are unappealing to me. Every once in a while, I would snap a picture and then look at the image to check my exposure times. It was around 11:10 and we hadn’t seen anything yet. Michael asked me what I wanted to do. I looked at the time and said “I want to wait. It’s still too early.” So we waited. We listened to the tree frogs and the murmurs of conversations happening around us. We watched a flat bottom boat hug the edge of the water on the other side of the lake and complained about the fisherman’s spotlight that he was using. Then I noticed a very faint green light. I pointed it out to Michael and said that it might be something, but most likely a cloud. So I snapped the shutter and we both gasped at the image. The camera captured a streak of green and purple dancing across the sky.

There are many many myths centered around the auroras, not surprisingly related to the afterlife. Japanese folklore spoke of the auroras as messengers from heaven. Native Americans believed the auroras were recently deceased loved ones, carrying torches on their way to heaven. This was a theme in one of the scenes from Almost Maine. In the scene, a woman has traveled to Maine to see the Northern Lights so she can say one final goodbye to her late husband. She’s carrying her broken heart in pieces in a paper bag and she meets a man who ends up taking that bag, dumping the pieces on the ground, and starts to fit those pieces of her heart. When Michael asked me to read this play with him, this was the hardest scene for me to read. Just the act of reading scenes itself brought up the memories of countless of hours of running lines with Chris. Mix those memories with that scene’s story line and it’s surprising I made it through it all alive. The aurora myths are easily believable if you don’t know anything about charged particles.

We were almost home when I said “Hey..remember that time we saw the Northern Lights?” as if it had been an event that happened years ago. I am almost uncertain that it even happened at all. The whole thing feels unreal, unbelievable. We never saw the auroras with our eyes, only through the camera and I had my camera set to a long exposure time. Our eyes just don’t have enough light sensors for seeing them at this latitude, but maybe in June, when we travel north for the moose hunt, we’ll have a better chance of seeing them with our eyes.

Maybe then I will change my mind about seeing ghosts.