Eventful Night

    Last night was a fairly eventful one.  I had heard about the likelihood of there being an aurora, and checked the sky around 10:00, but couldn’t really see anything, so I went to bed as normal.  I was just about to slumberland, when my mobile phone went off with an Evacuation Alert in Crescent Spur, due to an approaching forest fire.  In McBride’s extreme isolation, Crescent Spur is considered in the “neighborhood” even though it is 35 miles (56 km) away, so it didn’t really effect us.  

    At this point my sleep cycle has been interrupted, but I turned out the light anyway, to try to regain it.  I was just about there, when I got a text message from a friend up the road, who said the aurora was pretty good, so I got up, put on some clothes and went outside to see.  At our house, there really wasn’t much to see, because of a light cloud covering, but I could make out a faint bar of green light that arched up from the trees.

    I had just read an article saying that even if you couldn’t see an aurora, newer cell phones could often pick them up, so I got my cell phone out, aimed it toward the sky and took a photo.  The photo showed a pinpoint of light from the moon shining through the trees, but the rest of the photo just looked black, so I didn’t spend any more time taking photos.

    This morning I took another look at the photo and started tweaking it using the “Edit” function.  Sure enough, doing that did bring out some faint color of an aurora.  (Photo above).

    After all those interruptions, I made a third attempt to go to sleep.  This time I was successful and was snoozing peacefully until 2:00, when our landline phone rang.  Half asleep, I groped for the phone, and answered it, but there was no one on the line.  

    Since I was awake, I went down to the bathroom, then on my way back up to my room, went out on the balcony to check the sky again, but there was nothing to see but darkness.  I shuffled back to my bedroom, and fortunately, did eventually get back to sleep.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca