Oregon Is Officially A Northern State

 Oregon is officially a Northern State. In fact, we're practically as good as Alaska at this point. We have seen the Northern Lights!

Boasting and the fact that we are already a north(west)ern state aside, I feel so blessed to have been able to see this once in my life, especially living in an area of the US that doesn't often get to see this special treat.

It was spectacular, humbling, awesome, gorgeous, and a bit overwhelming when it first started. 

We knew there was a chance of viewing on Friday night from 10PM to 2 AM. Being an adventurous, night-owlish family, we hopped in the car at 10 and headed north of our mountain for our "unobstructed view to the north." It turns out that we could have stayed home and seen it just as well, but since we had a 5,000 ft. mountain behind us and no prophets in the family, we drove north to find a side road in the sagebrush flats to watch this great piece of space weather. We found our gravel road off of the highway (as did a number of other people) and we began to see the beginning of the Lights. The sky had a hazy, white "space-bow" arching over the sky. You know, if I hadn't been expecting the Northern Lights I might not have noticed it as anything out of the ordinary. It began to look a little green, as I assured myself over and over again trying to see it. Then, we discovered that if we looked away from the lights, we could see streaks in the sky out of the corners of our eyes. That was exciting.

 

The lights from the highway nearby, and the noise, were bothering our celestial experience, so we packed into the car and drove to a more remote road to see if we could see better. 

A few minutes later, it was getting very late, and the sky, while interesting, was hardly colorful at all and not your iconic Northern Lights experience. Oh well, it was what we should have expected - this was Oregon after all and we were south of the best area for viewing the Aurora Borealis. We headed home, thinking we had seen a cool thing. 

Part way home, I looked out the back window and broke out into exclamations. The sky was changing  -and turning green!!!

Fortunately we were coming up on another gravel road, which we turned onto pronto and bailed out of the car. There, right over that mountain supposedly blocking our view, was 

the most remarkable thing 

I have ever, 

ever seen

 in the night sky.

The striation was becoming more intense, and a gorgeous, blooming pink had formed above an amazing neon green. 
It was overwhelming - so vast and bright and nothing like anything that had ever took over our sky before. 

We hurried home and watched the show behind our own hill, where it showed up quite well.

We were some of the few people in this viewing who got to see colors with our naked eye  - and they were vivid! The ground was colored in pink light, and when we did finally head inside, pinkish aurora light was filtering in our windows and giving us light to walk by. 

The total eclipse has been eclipsed in our family by this amazing phenomenon!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey