When the aurora notifications pop up on my phone, at first I ignore them. It’s already a busy evening: my son has an afterschool club, Scouts, and a convoluted homework project to complete between times, leaving scarcely space for tea. But he gets the alerts too, and shows me the red graph peaks indicating that Earth’s magnetic field is already exceeding 800 nanoteslas.
When the time comes for pick-up from Scouts, my husband, Roy, persuades me to come. On the return trip I doze off watching the fat, waxing half moon, and only wake when we pull up somewhere that isn’t home. Roy has detoured to our habitual skywatching spot on the Stray, a long, straight road that undulates across the Castle Howard estate.
I get out of the van almost grudgingly. The air is sharp with the first frost of winter. There’s a pink glow to the north-west that needs a camera to see clearly. But as we watch, periodically flapping arms for warmth, eyes adjusting, a gauzy green curtain draws across the entire northern sky, its folds drifting in and out of focus.
Then, without warning, gold blooms beneath the rose, and all three colours intensify against the indigo sky. The silence rings loud in my blood, but beneath the commotion, two swans floating on an ornamental pond close to the road are somehow sleeping. Strangely, given all the colour above, their folded forms look not pink, or green, but grey. For all its intensity, this elfin light provides no illumination, and beneath its glow, the dark is darker.
The sky is changing but I keep missing it happen, as if a blink is too long. Roy says that, in trying to take it all in, I’m never focusing on the small areas where things begin. He’s probably right, but the gaps in perception make the whole experience feel slippery … evanescent. For all that physics can explain them, the auroras seem to speak directly to all we cannot see or hear, and sing of things no Earthling will ever know.
They are still singing when we finally go to bed, and although I can no longer see them, I know they are there, their eerie, quickening lullaby throbbing over the house.
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• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 20% discount
