Wide Open Spaces

I am a little bit anxious that these bright, wide-open, clear skies won't last much longer. That soon it will be overcast and gray and snowbanked.

I was at a creative reading about a month ago and among all the gorgeous words, one man got up and read from his book, which was about night, or darkness, maybe, in South Dakota. He read that he didn't get to see the Northern Lights very often from his home in Southeast South Dakota, and that when he has seen them, he's just been in awe.

I sat in the audience feeling smug, as North Dakotans often feel, since, as anyone would tell you, I'm sure, we're smarter, more practical, more hardworking, and able to take the cold better than anyone else in the entire world. Yes?

So, I sat there feeling smug. I get to see the Northern Lights all the time. I grew up with them. Our farm is about 2 miles off of old Highway 10, and before you reach our place, you have to crest a big hill. How many times we've breached the hill and been met by sheets of flickering pink, purple, green, blue, I can't even tell you.

My dad used to have his telescope set up on the porch of our trailer and he kept it up all summer long. When the stars or the planets or the comets or the moon were doing something spectacular, he would wake all of kids up and herd us outside. We'd take turns looking through the telescope, squinting. Sometimes it was 4 in the morning; sometimes it was midnight. All the time, though, it was my favorite.

Living here, now, I don't get to see the Northern Lights, and I didn't even realize I missed them before I heard that man's story. I still feel smug, though, or maybe privileged should be the word I use, that I've seen the sky in all her blue-blacked, purpled, pulsing glory.