Eleven forty at night, by the lake. Twenty-one below, and frost beginning to form on my lashes. A pale green band hung in the sky, and had hung there for half an hour, like a hesitant silk scarf — lovely, but a long way still from an ‘outburst’.
The guide glanced at the magnetic-field data on his phone and said just one thing: get ready.
No one had time to ask ready for what. That scarf suddenly tore open, and the green across the whole crown of the sky began to move, as though someone to the north had thrown back an entire curtain. The light came in layers: sharp bright green along the lower edge, blurring upward into purple, and higher still a pink with no name. They writhed, collapsed, and reassembled, too fast for the neck to keep up.
Three minutes, perhaps four. Then the sky slowly gathered itself back to that faint band, as if nothing had happened at all.
The lakeside stayed quiet a long time. Someone held their upturned face and did not lower it; someone said thank you softly in the dark — whether to the guide, or to the sky, no one could say.
On the walk back to the cabin, the guide said something we have never forgotten: the aurora is always there, in fact, there by day as well; it is only that the sky must be dark enough, the person cold enough, the wait long enough, before it is your turn to see it.
The things worth having are, for the most part, this same recipe.