Seeing the light
I was helping to pitch a tent in the paddock at the old family farm. The farm my grandparents farmed. The farm where my mother grew up and that I frequented throughout my childhood. The farm that has been in my family for almost a hundred years. A place full of memories and friendly ghosts. We were gathered for a family reunion, a celebration. Laughter. Games. Frivolity. Remembering and memory making.
Earlier in the evening I had heard gun shots. A nearby famer out after a fox ahead of lambing season perhaps. The ring of it on the night air. So when I looked up at the sky and saw a beam of light, my first thought was that it was a spotlight; the hunter for some reason shining a light skywards. But the image didn’t quite fit the thought. Then other beams joined it, so there were half a dozen beams of light streaming through the darkness. Or more. Tinged pale green.
“The auroro!” I said, pointing. My heart expanded. “I think that’s the Southern Lights,” I said, disbelieving.
My fellow tent-pitchers gathered around. “Wow.” “Cool.”
“Do you really think it is?” I asked, still not really believing.
“Definitely,” Rob said. “It can’t be anything else.”
I had somehow missed the news that this particular Saturday night was forecast to be especially good for seeing the aurora. Strange because seeing the auroras - the southern lights, Aurora Australis, and also the Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis - has long been one of my heart’s desires. Something that I have long thought I would plan to do one day. I had always imagined it would involve long distance travel to a freezing cold place, the Arctic or the Antarctic, or perhaps both. How fitting then that I see it almost accidentally, here in this place that has meant so much to me for so long, warmly surrounded by these people whom I love deeply.
The beams of light gave way to a pink glow. The glow deepened, spread across the southern sky. Turned cerise and silhouetted a peppermint tree. It tinged green across to the west. Faded to the black night sky above.
I walked over to the campfire, carefully built in the newly green paddock a distance from the house. Others were gathered, drinking wine and sharing stories. “Come over the other side of the house,” I said. “We can see the aurora.”
“The what?”
“The Southern Lights. You can see it clearly from just over there.” Me, pointing.
“Or we could stay here warm by the fire,” someone said, followed by laughter.
“Really? You can see it?” someone else asked. And she, and a couple of others, walked with me back across the paddock to where Rob, Toby and Lucy were standing.
And we watched. The colour already fading by then. Fading to pink. Then going. Fade to black. Cue the stars. The Milky Way above.
Lucy took a photo with her phone. Even as we looked we could see the image on the phone screen was brighter, darker, stronger, than that in the sky. Something to do with the time of exposure and the fact the camera lens can gather more light than our naked eyes can.
The Aurora, as seen through Lucy’s phone. Thanks Lucy!
I wondered at that. Have pondered it since. How the photo is somehow more spectacular than the reality was. It saddens me in a way. To think of a small image on a screen as being more beautiful than an illuminated sky. It is the difference between seeing nature in the raw and the curated images we have become so accustomed to. I remember as a child watching nature documentaries on television and being amazed by how the presenters found geckoes and lizards and bandicoots and possums in every tree they peered into. I traipsed through the bush and lifted bits of bark. I climbed trees and peered into dark hollows. I hardly ever found anything. Except the occassional dugite slithering away as I approached a log. “You don’t know how many times the TV presenters looked and didn’t find things,” my mother consoled me. “Nor how long they stayed there waiting for that one glimpse. Keep looking.” Perhaps she knew that the searching would help me find me.
It’s true that it takes time to gather the images from nature. Takes time for the aurora’s light to colour an image. But I’ll take the real world version any day, or night, of the week. The real world with the coolness of the night sneaking through my jumper or the dappled sunlight falling through trees to dance on the forest floor. The quick glimpse of the brilliant red of the scarlet robin’s breeding plumage rather than the photoshopped perfection of the Instagram image. The awe of the expanse of the aurora across the autumn sky rather than the bright spots of colour on the screen. But I’m also glad Lucy took the photos as proof that we really did see it.
See you outside,
Jill
Inside
The Broomehill Book Bash is on this Saturday. I’ll be there and keeping company with some fabulous WA writers. Come along and say hello if you are in the Great Southern of WA. Free tickets available through the link above and some further info via the Facebook link in the image below.
