The Northern Lights

One note: I’m no longer publishing posts on the date they were written but collecting them to publish once a week in 1,000 to 1,500 word blocks, for a five to ten minute read.

—04.06.2000—

I went for a walk on the back of the dying day, where the land was turning to ash, streaked with gray wisps, where the mountains, though noble, had turned to chalk. We are born into a world of liars, swindlers, and cheats, and grow up learning their tricks. Honesty, choked off and rare, eludes all but a precious few.

——

I was just looking over the tarot card reading that Alicia, my friend from high school, sent me at the end of January. One of the cards (the Seven of Swords for those in the know) showed a fox trying to figure out how to get into a henhouse. The card had to do with scheming to try and get what you want, which arises from not believing you deserve what you desire.

This struck me as doubly strange. Firstly because it rang a bell of recognition, and secondly because I just illustrated, in the previous post of this journal, what I had forgotten had been revealed to me a little more than two months before.

OK, you can start reading again now.

——

I was at Trevellan (James Ross’ farm) earlier this evening where I learned that Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and the Moon would all be lining up in the same small patch of sky tonight. So later, when Ellen knocked rapidly on the door and came in before I could answer, I thought I knew the reason for her excitement. “Nik, come outside quick. You’ve got to see this.”

“Oh yeah, all of the planets are lining up...”

“No, it’s the Northern Lights!”

It’s been a celestial extravaganza around here lately: a solar eclipse in August (before my stint on the island), a Moon rainbow in November, a lunar eclipse in January, and tonight a two-for-one.

I followed her out of the house and through the dark wearing house shoes and a sweater, just following her voice, not really being able to see where I was going. We stood at the intersection, on the path in front of their gate, and looked up at the sky. There in the northeast, extending from a dim arc of light that resembled the gray residue of sunrise, a faint and faded green streak stretched across the sky. Watching it shift in brightness and density was like watching the minute hand on a clock face move—you know it’s moving but you just can’t tell.

A few moments later I heard Hans approaching. “You’re in the wrong spot. Look at it from here.” We walked towards him and there in the northwest, above Periglis Cove, a large patch of sky was ablaze with transparent streaks of red the color of a chemical fire. “Oh my God!” It was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen. It was so bright, so vibrant, and so strange. They all headed into the field to get an unobstructed view and I ran back to the house to put on some boots and a coat.

Back outside, I fumbled with the rope on the gate post and stumbled blindly over the pasture, though I could make out the shadows of Jon, Hans, Bryce and Ellen in the distance. When I got there, everyone was chatting away in amazement. Hans said he had only seen the Northern Lights once before and Ellen mentioned that Cliff, one of the island’s oldest residents, once told her that he had seen them sixty years ago.

As we talked, those bright bands were turning out a fine show stretching across the northern horizon, glowing but without casting shadows like moonlight does. Slowly the curtain wavered until, all at once, the heavens flushed and the whole sky went bright red, like it had caught fire in front of our eyes. It spilled over in sheets beyond our field of vision, making the whole scene impossible to take in in its entirety. No one spoke. We all stood in awe at a momentous sight most of us had never witnessed and might not ever see again.

I cannot describe to you how utterly dumbstruck I was at the site of this wall-to-wall, fluxing, red curtain of light taking up a solid third of the entire dome of the sky, dwarfing us like the small things we were.

—04.08.2000—

Spring has been lifting a her skirt an inch at a time for the past few weeks now. And more and more people are coming to see the show. I went down to builder’s hour at the pub on Friday and instead of the seeing the same five or six familiar faces in an otherwise empty bar, the whole place full of people I didn’t know. The Sea Horse, the St. Martin’s boat, had moored at the quay bringing in a load of elderly holiday makers from St. Mary’s on a water-born pub crawl. Scuttling the idea of a quick pint, I headed back up the hill.

It’s strange to see the island so full of unfamiliar faces—so full of any faces at all, actually. Walking up the road it used to be rare that I’d meet anyone coming my way. It’s almost a regular occurrence now, even out on the Downs where I’ve only chanced upon two people all winter while out on walks. Signs for guesthouses and menus for cafes I didn’t know existed are springing up on the paths like weeds.

——

Jon brought a boat home from St. Mary’s yesterday. It arrived on the back of the Lyoness Lady, the freight boat, and was craned onto a trailer waiting at the quay. Bustle, she was called. After securing her with wedges and line, we towed her to the Periglis Cove boat shed on the other side of the island.

The hull was relatively narrow but the roads were relatively narrower. I walked behind making sure the boat wasn’t going to slide off of the trailer on hills and such. If it had though, there wouldn’t have been much I could have done besides yell and get the hell out of the way. Watching the boat squeeze its ass—they call it a transom over here—through hedges, forcing aside small trees, was quite a sight. It looked a little like trying to squeeze an elephant into a half-full elevator.

Down at Periglis Jon’s brother Oliver’s boat was already out of the shed and parked on the ramp. I had missed her being pulled out, as I was building walls on Gugh at the time. Jon got Bustle into position. We blocked up the end of the keel and he pulled the trailer out from under her as we slid more blocks underneath the keel as she came off. After a bit of levering and wedging she was balanced upright with “legs” on either side to keep her from tipping over. So there she sat in front of the boat shed, ready for a rebuild.

—04.09.2000—

Jack, Patricia’s Jack from Gugh, is on St. Agnes until Wednesday. I went over to there yesterday afternoon to talk with him about sailing and to express my enthusiasm. He outlined their rough plan. He and a fellow named “Dom,” who he described as six-foot-six and incorrigible, would be setting off from Kent (in the south-east of England) in mid-May, sailing back to Scilly, up to Ireland, over to the Azores, back across to Spain, and then returning via Scilly around September. I gulped. September? Wow, I hadn’t realized it would be that long but said something like, “That could work.”

The thing is Jack and I don’t really know each other that well. So I imagine the prospect of making plans to spend several months together in close quarters is as odd for him as it is for me. In the end, he squinted at me across the garden table, perspiring, and covered in bits of grass from having just tested a new chain flail on the back of their tractor, and suggested I sail back with them from Kent to Scilly to see how I liked it. I agreed.

Now a sailing journey awaits.