It’s been difficult times for awhile. Work, social and family
issues…what else? Things have not necessarily been going wrong, but
never quite seem to go right either. After a time, a person just
starts to feel snake bit.
 
It all came to a head in the last week. I’ve been frustrated,
worried, and feeling incompetent in all the things I’ve been trying to
do. The juggling balls have all been falling from my grasp at the same
time. At some point despair began looking like a viable option.
 
Then came Saturday night.
 
On Saturday afternoon, I made the four hour trip to Moorhead,
Minnesota to pick up my son, Ian. We then drove an hour and a half
from there to my mother’s house, just outside the town of Battle Lake,
in the west-central part of Minnesota lake country. We had a pleasant
evening with Mom and my step dad, and everyone except for me was pretty
much settled into bed by midnight or so. Around one a.m., I decided to
go outside for a last cigarette before going to bed.
 
Standing in the driveway and smoking, I was disappointed to see that
the neighbor’s new yard light combined with the streetlamp out on the
county road to obscure the sharp black of the night sky above. I
decided to crunch through the bit of remaining snow and go to the back
yard -on the north side of the house- to look at the Milky Way and the
multitude of beautiful stars that shine down from the cold spring
sky.
 
Rounding the corner of the garage, I was startled to see a very
bright band of fuzzy light hanging above the northern horizon. At
first, I thought it was clouds illuminated by the full moon. After a
moment, I realized I was in the right place and time to see northern
lights in full glory. It was the first time in at least fifteen years,
that I’d been granted such a gift.
 
The band of light trailed as if it had been left by the billowing
head of brightly glowing cloud that moved slowly from east to west,
then curved downward and to the north. As I watched and shivered in
the cold, the head majestically continued moving in slow motion, until
it had moved down, around, and east again, centering itself in front
of me about halfway between the wide light-band it had left while
moving west, and the horizon. From there, waves shimmered outward
-east, west, up and down -the whole billowing structure floated in my
direction, stretching across the entire vault of sky above.
 
The lights were mostly bright white and yellowish, with hints of
green, blue, and violet, dancing always at the edges of my vision,
regardless of where I looked. The structure then began to break into
smaller forms and shapes, swirling around each other in a slow, yet
somehow frenetic choreography of light, always pulsating slightly as
it moved in rhythmic waves across the sky.
 
I wondered how many people must have stood on or near this very spot
down through the centuries. The lake behind, rolling hill-prairie in
front, a perfect place to view the northern sky. I really began to
understand at last, the essence of those legends and stories of “ghost
riders in the sky”, or “battles in the heavens”, that have passed down
through generations of humanity. Sheer, gut-level awe in the presence
of this inexplicable beauty and power on display simply begged for
wondrous and supernatural stories of explanation.