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Seeing as an Uncertain Experience:
I love this beautiful passage from Katherine May’s book Wintering.
“At that moment, I realised that every image of the [northern] lights I had ever seen had been misleading. I had been poring over photographs of neon displays as lurid as disco lights, and watching YouTube videos of lights that strike out against the night sky, bold and distinct. These are invariably sped up, the luminous greens and pinks enhanced by long exposures. Look closely, and you will see the stars shining through the aurora in every picture; they are not even bright enough to eclipse tiny pinpoints of light from trillions of miles away. They move slowly, like drifting clouds. Seeing them is an uncertain experience, almost an act of faith. You have to get your eye in, and I honestly don’t think I would ever have spotted them at all had I not been told they were there.
There is nothing showy about the northern lights, nothing obvious or demanding. They hide from you at first, then they whisper to you. We would squint into the sky, and say, ‘is that them, there? Do you think? Over there? Yes. Yes! Maybe. I don’t know….’ But then, eventually at a pace set entirely by the firmament, we were given the gift of seeing them, as if in reward for our faith and patience. Then, we seemed to see them everywhere.” (p. 162)