aurora_borealis ovenbird I fish the night skies for solar wind. As the light dims to summer’s perpetual twilight I wander to the darkest place I can find, a point of land that meets the mouth of the Fraser River. I’m equipped with my DSLR camera, a wide angle lens, and a red light flashlight. I check the stats–a possible KP7, potential for a G3 solar storm, nT numbers sinking as low as -1200 triggering a Red Alert that is blowing up my phone with pinging notifications. Inbound IMF is good. Substorm is in expansion. It all looks promising so I’m staring north, willing my eyes to see ribbons of aurora through the distant light pollution. I have my camera on a tripod, remote trigger release ready. Other people stand waiting too. The wind is a thrilling companion, whipping up adrenaline. The stars are out and I see a flash that might be a meteor just over the mountains. I sink my mind into the sky, my spinning thoughts are bait. I wait. Nothing happens. The sky doesn’t erupt as I expect it to. A man next to me says, “looks like we won’t catch anything but wind.” But he sounds happy. I’m happy too. I’m standing outside at midnight with a handful of other humans weird enough to forgo sleep for the chance of seeing a rare celestial event. We’re willing to be disappointed again and again on the off chance that conditions will be just right and we will get to witness what happens when the sun’s charged electrons and protons smash into the gases swirling in Earth’s upper atmosphere and create billions of neon lights. (Sometimes the world is so beautiful it hurts). After an hour I give up, caving to the threat of tomorrow’s exhaustion. I pack up, start to walk back to my car… which is when I happen to look straight up and see above me an arc that could be mistaken for clouds but is, I’m fairly sure, something else entirely. My heart starts leaping about like a dog waiting for treats. I get my camera out again, let light hit the sensor for 8 full seconds, and get to see STEVE like a wisp of smoke punctuated by constellations. STEVE is a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, a smattering of words that barely make sense but describe the ghostly emergence of pink-purple light created by extremely fast moving, super heated particles called subauroral ion drift. STEVE occurs only alongside the aurora but does not always appear. He is a reticent guest, more rare than the aurora itself, and his light is hitting my eyeballs and this is how I know magic is real. STEVE doesn’t stay long. He tends to make an appearance and disappear in well under an hour. You really have to be in the right place at the right time to catch him. So my lure comes up with a shining fish after all. I go home to bed but I keep seeing stars behind the closed lids of my eyes, and sleep takes a long time to claim me. 250603 what's it to you? who go blather from