At This Time of Year, At This Time of Day, In This Part of the Country, Localized Entirely Within Your Kitchen

Was walking to Mills with Kristin tonight, and I see something out of the corner of my eye. It was glowing and kind of looked like a streak in the sky. For some reason, it just clicked in my head that it might be the aurora Borealis.

Of course, Kristin called me an idiot and kept walking. But as I stared at it more, I realized this thing was pulsating. Green.

Turns out it actually was the Northern Lights, something I find out happens pretty rarely this far South (only 10% are seen below middle Canada, so figure we had a 5% chance of seeing this in action). As everyone knows, the northern lights are caused when the sun releases solar particles that hurtle towards Earth at a million miles an hour, get pulled towards Earth by its magnetic field, and collide with gases in the atmosphere. Duh.

It actually was really cool, though. Me, Kristin, Toni, and Silva all drove out a little ways into the Oneonta wilderness where there are no light to see it more clearly. It was streaks in the sky, all over the northern horizon. There was a constant throbbing of the light, shooting up towards this vortex looking thing above our heads, all in green and a little red. Silva said it perfectly: "This is definitely one of those things you have to see before you die." I can imagine people thousands of years ago seeing this thing and freaking out; it looked like some sort of alien ray sucking up souls.

Nature, good show tonight.