Northern Lights

Last night Craig woke me up because he had seen the Northern Lights, and heard them too. He said they sounded like tinkling glass. I imagine it to be a sound like pieces of a glass chandelier gently knocking together when bumped by a tall person's head. They changed from green to blue to red and purple and back again, pulsing upward in long streaks in the sky. By the time I got out of bed and threw on a jacket to see them, they were fading away into light green, gentle streaks in the sky, that could almost be mistaken for smudges on my glasses. We watched a while with our faces pressed to the chilly glass of the kitchen window, hoping for a grand second act, but the most colourful part of the display was over, and the green faded back into the dark expanse of the night sky. The smoke from all the woodstoves in town floated by horizontally just above the rooftops in a mysterious white roiling mist, almost like a bank of fog from home. It was too cold for the smoke to rise.

It's a clear day here today, and -36, so I have hopes to see (and hear!) these beauties later tonight.