Seeing the Northern Lights

A true story and a poem

In 2016, I took a solo hiking trip to Alaska. While romping around Anchorage and Denali, I overheard that the northern lights might be visible that week. Immediately intrigued, I tempered my excitement with the acknowledgement that we were getting about 19 hours of sunlight a day, and the odds may not be all that favorable.

They didn’t turn out to be. But ever since then, seeing the aurora borealis has sat patiently on my bucket list.

This Friday afternoon, I got a text from a friend saying that the northern lights might be visible in Seattle. That was exciting, but the odds seemed remote, so I sipped my Sleepy Time tea and whiled away the evening with my book. Around 9pm (dangerously close to bedtime) another text came, and we decided why not make an adventure of it, throwing together our camping gear and driving up to some DNR land an hour north of the city.

My friend saw it first. I could tell by the tenor of her voice as she stepped out of the car that it was the real thing. “It’s the lights!” her tone a mixture of awe and disbelief. I leaped out after her.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, and I laughed at the pure miracle of it. Surrounded by towering spruce and pine, serenaded by the shockingly loud chorus of nearby frogs, I craned my neck and marveled at the majesty of a watercolor night sky and the bright stars that freckled its canvas.

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized the northern lights had appeared in a poem I’d written just a couple of weeks prior. What perfect serendipity. Read on below.

Moonbeam Hair

I cradled your body in my palm 
When I formed you from stardust 
And the neon light of Aurora Borealis. 
Bottled some moonlight for your hair, 
The secret ingredient revealed as you age
And don more silvery luster. 
I scooped up the sea 
And sewed delicate shells on for ears.
Doctors see only numbers, 
But your pulse is the rush and receding of waves. 

I ran my hand over thousands of oysters 
To find the one for your heart, 
Young and strong, 
A luminous pearl inside.
You learned to keep this valve closed, 
To paint it pleasing colors
And sigh with relief when left intact.
But as the moon shows in your mane, 
You peek at your pearl and see what I see,
A tiny treasure made perfect from impurity.

I grew your limbs from seeds
Until they were strong and pliable.
Clumsy and brittle at first, you learned
To wear them steadfast in bellows yet
Bend to the breeze.
Simon says calloused hands are the only ones worthy of pride, but
You let yours bloom.
You made art;
And your stardust made it sparkle.

Your dreams dance with the music I plucked from beaks of birds
And khaki grasses in unplowed plains.
Alone in a dense forest, I closed my eyes and swept up the sound - 
The silence that’s always saying something - 
And gave you your voice.
You let it rust
Until one day you tested its melody, 
And the dancers in your head were delighted, 
While your art was like spring;

Fragrant,

Fresh, 

Free. 

Your little kneecaps were mushrooms;
You cried when you broke one.
The doctor-who-only-sees-numbers fixed it back up, but
Not quite the same.
You wear your scars like Hermés. 
Each toe pad a tiny leaf.
You teetered 
And taught yourself to stand
On your own ten toes, two feet, 
Bivalve heart whistling;
And just like water carves canyons, 
It paints wrinkles under eyes that you cherish 
With floral fingers
In light of moonbeam hair.