One of His masterpieces...

First of all, Thanks to Him who put them up there. Second thanks to my "Northern Lights friend," simply, for sharing it with me. And third, thanks to Jiann Chyuan who unknowingly inspired me to write about something that deserves to be described.

It was a cold, clear night - In Norway the nights are mostly cold and the clearer they are, the colder they are - and we were both feeling a little bored and energetic -a perfect combination for going out for a walk...and so we did. We set off, on our usual trek route behind our flats in Steinan, up the narrow ice-covered trail to the power plant. It was a weekday and was therefore relatively quiet. With only the occasional rustle of a light breeze through the corn fields and the inky star-spangled canvass above we climbed up to the plant, planning to go on afterwards to our usual look-out post atop the hill. It was a lovely night and we were entranced, as we usually are, by the special beauty of this place that says so much, so simply, so silently. Nowhere else would I have dared to walk through a forest at 12 at night - but here...here it was different. Our only companions were the bushes and the trees and they did not seem to resent our intrusion too much! As we kept walking, we noticed, but chose to ignore for a while, a strange greyish-green cloud that had mysteriously appeared above us. When we reached the plant, however, we turned around and looked up...and were transfixed.

Imagine a dragon...a dragon of green that leaps across the sky, looking for all the world like a rainbow, that suddenly ducks and turns and tries to catch its own tail...all these maneouvres executed with a grace that defied the imagination. Imagine two more dragons like that appearing out of nowhere...chasing each other across the black canvass, appearing to flow from one brilliant star cluster to another and then just as mysteriously disappearing, only to reappear a few seconds later from the other direction as if having forgotten to visit a star! Yes...we were witnessing a masterpiece...created by an artist whose imagination knows no bounds and whose canvass is the very sky itself - the Aurora Borealis, commonly known as the Northern Lights.

We stood there, completely oblivious to the crick in our necks...and in those couple of minutes, I felt I could reach out and touch that dragon's head, thank it for having put on this show for me. As soon as we perceived a break in this phenomenal exhibition we hurried on to our look-out post and were just in time to catch the sight of a rainbow of green arching across the black fjord, across the town that in itself looked like the sky turned upside down, above our heads, and into the hills beyond. I tried to imagine what the first Vikings would have felt...knowing as they did, absolutely nothing about ions or any of the details that created these supernatural fireworks...and I am sure this indescribably beautiful work of art contributed, atleast partly, to their decision to settle down here in such inhospitable climes!