My husband and son stand together on the balcony outside our house in the darkness, warm inside their thick down jackets, furred hoods hiding their chilled faces. Side by side they watch the lights drifting across the night sky over the mountain. A ghostly green illuminates the snowy tops, shooting forth soft tendrils of light out into the open darkness of the sky beyond. Little pulsations of light pump along their length like blood pumping through a vein. The colour intensifies into reds and rapid little jets shoot along the length. Suddenly there is a change in the movement and the whole length of the stream of light drops and spreads downward – a curtain of white, green, and red in a fluttering, shimmering dance. The father and son watch silently until the movement fades and the light softens and slows to a dull, languorous glow. Finally it is so faint and still that one wonders if it was all imagined.
Our son shuffles in his winter boots. “What are those lights anyway?” he asks.
“They’re memories of explosions on the sun” he replies.
