The Coin of the Realm

An Apostle Islands postcard

The aurora is blazing tonight. The numbers on the apps I check are some of the best I’ve seen in years — BZ and KP and density and solar wind speed. Dazzling photographs from shooters I follow in other parts of the world are filling my social media feed. It is happening; and I can’t see a thing.

I can’t see a thing because the northern lights are not the only thing blazing tonight. Dozens of wildfires are raging uncontrolled in Canada — Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan — sending plumes of smoke southward, blotting the skies over the Apostle Islands as surely as a shroud.

The cost of wildfires is often tallied in acres of timber lost, structures damaged, and even, tragically, the loss of human life. All of those are important. But tonight I am thinking of another kind of cost. Where do you put the decimal point in the loss of an opportunity for wonder? What is the dollar amount assigned to being robbed of the chance to bend your head back and see the sky dancing? Smoke from those Canadian wildfires is stinging our eyes, scratching our throats, but it is also rendering a cost to our souls — by the worry inflicted over the continuing toll of climate change, and by stealing from us the moments of awe under the northern lights.

Tomorrow’s news feed will speak of rising health care costs due to respiratory ailments and the cost of rebuilding. But if we could somehow add a column for the loss of awe?If beauty were the coin of the realm, the true cost of those fires blazing tonight in the lands to our north would be much, much higher, one could even say astronomical.

— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted).