A Thousand Words

When words fail and numbers crumble, all that remains is awe

I am a writer who takes pictures, not a photographer. But I knew from the very beginning of this undertaking of trying to understand my sense of place in these islands, that the journey would be taken in photographs as well as in words. As difficult as it may be for someone like me who lives in language to admit, there are simply times when even the most eloquent of words don’t quite measure up, when the urge to talk falls away and the only proper response is an awed silence.

Last Sunday night was one of those nights.

An auroral storm had unleashed itself from the sun a few days earlier sending supercharged particles hurtling towards the earth 93 million miles away at speeds approaching 2 million miles an hour, glowing as they skipped like flat stones off the earth’s atmosphere creating an epic display of northern lights seen as far south as Arizona and Alabama. If it is numbers you like, the Kp value reached 7.8 (with 9 being the highest) according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, triggering a G3 to G4 level geomagnetic event on a scale that tops out at G5.

If it is chemical reactions that interest you, we could discuss how the ghostly green is caused by those particles from the sun, mostly electrons, colliding with molecules of oxygen in our atmosphere at certain levels (predominately 65-150 miles up) and the red you sometimes see results from those same electrons colliding instead with nitrogen at slightly lower levels in our atmosphere. Or, we could talk about the celestial mechanics that put the earth in line with a part of the sun more prone to solar flares every eleven years creating what is known as the “solar maximum” (a period of high auroral activity that we are expected to reach in July of 2025).

But on a night like this, standing beneath a sky gyrating as if to silent music, numbers and chemical reactions and celestial mechanics seem only a distraction of the intellect, that annoying human predilection to constantly quantify and catalog. But, to witness the northern lights is to stare directly into the wonderous. Parsing that wonder into strands of mathematical equations and scientific notations rubs the shine off of the full human experience of the moment - like reducing the flicker of a campfire into nothing more than the interplay of excited molecules emitting energy in the form of heat and light. Like few other sights in nature, witnessing the northern lights instills a sense of awe beyond the capacity of equations or even words to fully explain. At displays of human-made fireworks, people clap and laugh and shout excitedly. Beneath the northern lights, they most often stand quietly, talking in low, almost reverent tones if they talk at all, as if humbled into silence at the enormity what they are witnessing.

That silence touches something fundamental in us about the human/nature connection. It affirms what so many of us want to believe about our world: that things exist beyond the weights and measurements of instruments; that the universe is made up of something more than just quantifiable biomass; that while science and intellect have their place, there is a place too for mystery and the sheer force of unspeakable and unspoken beauty.

So, with the Little Dipper still safely tucked away until ice out, I set aside all the numbers and words. I walked the beach at Little Sand Bay alone from sunset until nearly 3 am, photographing, exploring, watching the moon set behind Sand Island, and finally just sitting on the edge of the lake, feet in the sand, eyes wide open, head bowed back in a posture the opposite of prayer, awed to silence by the heavens dancing above. There was no more need for words.

(all photographs by Jeff Rennicke)