Aurora Borealis

I've talked about the canoe trip I took in high school through the wilds of Cananda before on this blog. What follows is yet another anecdote from said trip.

Up where we were, about 300 miles or so north of Winnipeg, the days are long in July. I'd say it was at least 10pm before it got dark. Therefore, we didn't get to see it dark that often, since we were usually sound asleep by 9 or so. After all, we'd been up at 5am and canoed and portaged on average 30 miles before making camp, cooking, cleaning, and setting up the tents. Hell, we were lucky if we were still awake at 9pm.

Thus, we didn't get a chance to see the Northern Lights. Fred, my cousin and guide on this trip, thought we were lazy bastards because of this, and I guess he had a point. It also got kind of cold at night, so once we were in the tent we were usually in there until the morning (when we'd see hundreds of blood-gorged mosquitoes hovering around the top of the tent, but that's a story for another day).

One night, however, I woke up having to go to the bathroom and simply couldn't wait until the morning. I got out of the tent and wandered out a bit into the brush, and while standing there happened to look up.

Wow.

Later I realized it was the Northern Lights, but at the time, due to the fog in my head because of my sleepiness I thought I was in a dream, or on X or something (1). It was amazing... the whole sky sort of folded upon itself and shimmered a bit, all in complete silence... there was no wind or loon calls or water rushing. It was nothing like what I thought The Northern Lights were supposed to look like, which is another reason I didn't realize what I was looking at until much later (2). I finished and went back to sleep and promptly forgot about the whole thing by morning.

I'd really love to see that again, but fully awake this time.

(1) I'm guessing, because I've never actually tried X
(2) "much later" being several months later, when I suddenly remembered the whole thing.