Green Light

Have you ever literally walked blindly through the woods searching for light while the creepy sound of your footsteps in the snow plays with your mind? Well, this was my experience when I had the crazy idea to follow my to-do-list-before-I-die. “Seeing the Northern Lights” was in my top 10 and since I was located in Helsinki at that time it just took me a week to reach Rovaniemi and step into the woods, facing the fear of the unexpected.

As I should have imagined, venturing into the wild with -13 C° on a February night to look for Northern Lights was definitely not a good idea. After waiting in vain for 3 hours at the top of the hill, me and my friend decided to go home realizing we had lost our way. Surrounded by a muffled silence without signals on our phones, I was sure the cold night was going to take us. So, we started to walk up what we could see of the ski run to the valley, towards the village. There was no a sound to be heard, no source of light, and no human sign apart from a fence probably built decades ago.

I felt lost and small. Really small, compared to the magnitude of the Earth. I could feel my body fighting the cold, my eyes scanning through the darkness with difficulty and my ears hoping for a human sound. I realized I was just another living creature subjected to the law of nature. The disappointment for the missed tick on my list was half healed by this amazing opportunity to admire all the scaring power of nature in a calm night in Lapland.

Suddenly, they exploded. As if the beauty of nature was not precious enough, the black sky was colored with serpentine waves of a pale green light. There they were: no sounds, no warnings. The Northern Lights in all their enchanting uniqueness. No words could explain the moment the darkness was conquered by the phenomenal light: it has to be experienced in first person.

At that moment, I really cared less about being lost. I looked at my friend smiling and together we stared at the Northern Lights in devoted silence. They were growing slowly, snaking into the sky, shining of their own light. They were living, the only lively presence in that desert night, and with their guidance we found our way back home.

That night, I went to bed with the pale green light into my eyes and that feeling of smallness still on my skin. Something had moved in my heart. The way I look at the world would never be the same again.

"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous." — Aristotle