Breathless I watched, at first uncomprehending, a little fearful.
For a few crazy moments the certainties of the world vanished: the sky was rolling over and over in a self-cannibalistic frenzy, like giant celestial rip tides.
Each roll radiated a different colour: violet, red, yellow, blue, cyan and green. There was a momentary brilliance, whiteness … then more roiling.
The eye was desperate to take in everything, but the action was too quick, the stage too vast.
Occasionally colours would merge into a haze, creating a shimmering greenish curtain across the skyline. It was easy to think of the skies dancing or spirits whirling in fury or perhaps in celebration.
What would people in a long gone, non-scientific age have made of it all?
Then came the climax … for a few seconds the sky unified for a single theatrical effect, a vast cone of ghostly light that swallowed me as I stood in the woods near Jarvie.
The show continued, but nothing could eclipse what I had witnessed so I returned to the cabin. The aurora borealis had suddenly become more than a name or a scientific term for a natural phenomenon; now it was an unforgettable experience.
It was beautiful, it was slightly disturbing, it was extremely humbling.
Something palpably changed that Tuesday night, and the next morning came evidence, signalled by a chorus of geese departing to warmer climes. To Mexico, I later learned.
Outside, there was a sharpness in the air, a reminder of summer’s unfulfilled and still lingering promise and a harbinger of much harsher times, something to be confronted, but not just yet.
Everywhere there were leaves, in the air and on the ground. Across the Pembina River they swarmed like butterflies, yellow wings glinting in the fragile sun.
Autumn, that most modest and understated of months, had finally announced itself after the Indian summer.
Against the false hope of spring, the disappointments of summer and the brutality of winter, autumn promises nothing, but gives in abundance.
The gifts are in the leaves, the yellowing hues of foliage … and the aurora borealis for those who spend nights in the forest.
There is a cold, unignorable melancholy about the landscape now that inspires the same feeling of watching a departing much-loved friend or relative. Or even seeing the geese take flight to Mexico.
We should celebrate autumn and all its glories, its mellow fruitfulness, its sombre quiet solemnity. Its deep troubled beauty.
Heading along the highway towards Barrhead, past gas stations, burger bars, schools, bus depots, houses and other markers of man’s need to impose order everywhere, I gave thanks for the brilliant chaos of the northern lights.
It is the greatest light show on Earth.
