Welcome to my world. Well, actually the mountains get in the way most of the time, but I’ve seen the Northern Lights two or three times here in Vancouver, and they can be seen throughout most of BC when the sunspots align just right and all the polar bears are facing north north-west, so the light reflects off their silvery backs.

This video is timelapse photography from Fugly.com, and it’s kind of a shame, as one of the things I adore about the Aurora Borealis is the magnificently unhurried way the curtains of light wave in the sky. Also, this is all-green, and the purples and reds and indigos I know and love are sadly missed. My parents used to wake me up when I was little (and lived in Winnipeg) to watch the Northern Lights, and the self-evident magic of it, the middle of the nightishness of it, and the fact that it was considered important enough to wake us up for always associated it in my mind with Christmas. I didn’t even read The Father Christmas Letters till much later, but they explain plenty.