Aurora Borealis

I-69 takes me from my home in central Michigan to the place I was born, Angola, Indiana. My Dad helped build part of that highway when he was a young man and I was about three feet tall. He is now retired and I am now dreaming of retiring.

Back in the early 1990's, I was traveling north on I-69 after a wonderful visit with my Grandparents. It was dark and the sky was peppered with stars. Off in the west I could see the beam of a spotlight, the kind that a business might use to attract customers, shining straight up into the night. I kept driving.

Then I started thinking.

Off in the west was nothing. No towns, no cities. No stores that would shine a spotlight up into the sky. I kept my eyes on that light, curious.

The Creator blessed me that night, for it was precisely in a random moment that I was watching the light when an arc formed around it and out poured the deepest crimson I have ever seen, as if someone had a giant pitcher of liquid color and was emptying it across the sky.  Soon greens and blues appeared, swirling across the black sky. I blinked hard, rubbed my eyes, for a moment unable to comprehend what I was seeing. Then it hit me.

It was the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights.

I pulled to the side of the road and turned off my car. As I watched the colors dancing across the heavens, I started to cry. I had never seen anything so beautiful and it literally took my breath away, moving me to tears at its magnificence.

Grandma! I had to call Grandma!

I started up my truck and raced to the rest area, which was only a few miles up the road. Thank heavens I had lots of quarters for the payphone. I began dialing. Grandma answered.

"Grandma, Grandma, the Northern Lights are out! Go outside quick and look up between your trees. I know you can see them! Hurry!" I exclaimed, barely able to contain myself.  I then put in quarter after quarter, calling every person I knew to tell them to go out and look up into the sky.

Everyone at the rest area was standing outside, silent, watching the beautiful reds and greens and whites and blues swirling and pirouetting across the midwestern sky. It was Sacred. There was reverence.


What a glorious place we live in, what amazing and awesome gifts we are given in the form of beauty on this Earth. It is beauty that must be shared when we experience it. An instinctual response put there to keep us all connected to such things that steal our breath. I hope you see something beautiful today, something that steals your breath and makes you run to the phone to call everyone you know. And I hope they all answer.