Do you see what I see?

The night of October 10th at almost exactly midnight, the sky exploded in light. Hewn in every direction was dancing color so bright to the eye I wanted to cry. Shot on my ultra wide 12mm lens with my full frame camera this image captured the entire upper sky.

Recently, as I was finally going back over the images from that night, I seen something! An angel. But then I seen something else….

That night was actually a hard night for me. My art exhibition fell on the exact night one of the brightest solar storms in 20 years hit. And it was a very early aurora show, starting just after sunset. I had to be inside until 8! On top of that dealing with a few rude individuals that night as well had made me unsettled. I had planned a major hike that involved two hours of driving and then hiking up a rugged unnamed peak in the Cabinet Wilderness. But I was so exhausted and didn’t know if the lights would last long enough even by the time I made it up there, as the flare was going to subside some point after 11PM. I kid you not as me, my sister, and friend dropped some stuff off at the gallery I stood there inside for about 5 minutes contemplating my next move. Trying to decide what to do! To do the crazy hike with my exhausted state, or take them somewhere instead. I opted to take my sister and friend to a spot we could drive to looking over the lake. I had wanted to share the Aurora with family and friends for a while as most all of my escapades to photograph it were alone at night deep into the wilderness.

Once we arrived I proceeded to hike out over the lake and began taking panoramas. After a while it died down and I decided to drive my comrades back to where they parked their car a few miles down, just before the road got crazy. As I was packing my gear to take them back it hit like I’ve never seen!! I wasn’t in my photo spot anymore but we all just marveled. There were insane light tracers all around us and above us and large neon green bright spots moving in the horizon. My sister says to me, get your camera out! I did and took some images. Then as the sky was exploding straight above layed my camera on a flat rock and took three long exposure shots straight up. This was my last one.

I was sad I didn’t make it to my photo spot as it hit. And yet I know for sure I would have never captured this if I would have been! I would have been too focused on the lake and landscape scene with the lights instead of straight above me. It’s really crazy to me that God always knows what He is doing even when I feel like I failed. You see getting “the shot” has been very important to me. And in some ways it felt like I was a failure in that this night. Yet even in my frustrations I had been trying to listen to His spirit that evening. And He showed up, in the most unexpected way for me! And over a week later I finally see Him in it more than ever. And I got to experience it with others as well.