Northern Light on Nels Bight

As alluded to in my previous post, the last evening on the beach at Cape Scott was a magical one. Shortly after the hues of sunset disappeared into the Milky Way above, the Aurora Borealis appeared, at first faintly then gradually picking up some luminosity. None of us had seen the Northern Lights in some time, and for one, it was their first experience. Neighbours at a campsite down the beach crept over to ensure we were seeing the performance. The few people on the beach that night had a collective experience, one captured in our mind’s eye as icing on our summer wilderness adventures.

Before we knew it, the green tones were fading into the sky and our naked eye was again filled with billions of twinkling stars and an inky black sky. I was going to do some night exposures later in the evening, so I wasn’t quite set up yet but did a 210-second capture just as the Lights disappeared for us. My 14mm lens did it’s job gathering light from the dark sky, eventually revealing the Aurora that was still happening, just outside our visual range, perhaps enough to light the way for the wolves and bears prowling the Cape.

Nels Bight, Cape Scott, 2014.