4 days ago
Of auroras and candlelight
King's Birthday weekend saw the Griffin clan decamp to our new crib in Middlemarch. It was meant to be quiet. Slow. Reflective. Books, board games, and an experimental stew I'd prepped with the kind of seriousness usually reserved for museum board meetings.
What I didn't know as we rattled west out of Dunedin Friday afternoon was that the Sun — never one for observing public holidays — had exploded.
Not literally, but close enough: a giant solar eruption had sent a blast of charged particles careening towards Earth. By Saturday morning, my phone was buzzing with coded messages from my usual back-channel sources: geomagnetic storms incoming. Major aurora alert. Charge your batteries. Cancel your plans.
Now, I am an astronomer. A professional, as my accountant and increasingly weary family would attest. And so, on Saturday evening, while the rest of the household settled in with books and red wine, I was outside, deploying cameras like a man possessed. Across both paddocks. Tripods bristling with optics.
I had the look of someone trying to film an NHNZ documentary on migrating hedgehogs.
The trouble was, the house was ablaze. Every window shone with warm yellow light, leaking out across the section like a lighthouse designed to ruin astrophotography. Even the bathroom window glowed like a warning beacon from low orbit.
I went inside, said something that began kindly and ended with a phrase I now regret: "You're blowing out the histograms."
There was a silence. Then, one by one, they turned off the lights. My daughter lit a candle. Then another. Soon, the whole family was reading by flickering flame, the house aglow like some 19th-century Scandinavian lodge, with the aurora blazing behind it in shades of lime and crimson.
Someone passed around chocolate. Someone else found a blanket. The dog snored. Outside, the sky shimmered and danced, ancient and alive.
This week's photo shows that moment: Griffins around a table, each caught in the act of quiet rebellion — or possibly love — beneath a sky performing miracles.
Am I obsessive? Yes.
But sometimes, obsession lights the way.
