Finding Awe at Buckhorn Lake

A Look Back At A Moment Of Wonder

Your humble author with his pals at Buckhorn Lake

The first time I saw the Northern Lights was at Buckhorn Lake in Ontario, Canada.

When I was a kid, every summer my family and our extended family rented a big cabin in Buckhorn and family members would come and go for a day or for days. My dad and my uncles would fish. There were rocks and hikes. Campfires. Card games.

I have a handful of core memories from Buckhorn.

Being in a boat with my dad and him trying to teach me how to fish. I never liked fishing but I liked being on a boat with my dad.

My mom making grilled cheese sandwiches on a long pot holder over an open campfire.

Me wiping out on a large rock and tearing open my knee, leading to five stitches. (Still have that scar.)

Playing D&D with my cousins late into the night on a screened in porch by the lake as peepers sang around us.

And of course, the Northern Lights.

Our family would rent a cabin for a couple weeks and family would come and go

I recall it being a really warm evening and my cousin calling us out of the cabin. There was this long straight away that led down past the fire pit to the lake. I walked down there to him and he pointed up the way I came toward the cabin.

The night was black and clear, no lights around. And there over the cabin, like sharp flickering daggers, were streaks of bright white and yellow light. I’d never seen anything like it, I still haven’t despite seeing Aurora Borealis a few more times in my life, including a couple days ago.

That first time was like a dream. I didn’t understand how the lights became the sky. I didn’t understand how they blinked and rotated like that over thousands of miles. Nobody said anything. The lights were silent, of course. I was maybe eight or nine I’m guessing.

I’d like to report that seeing the Northern Lights for the first time ignited my interest in space, or science, but it didn’t. What it did do was make me feel small and human. I suppose as a little kid, if you had asked me then, I wouldn’t have been able to put that into words. But that was the start of it - the notion that all our bickering, and fighting, and differences mean nothing. Literally nothing. At least not to the energized particles slamming into our planet’s magnetic field.

There is much bigger out there. Call it science. Call it God. That doesn’t matter.

There I was with my family, at a lake, and the sky danced. And so, a couple days ago, when my daughter took a picture of the red and purple streaks in the sky above our streetlight, I was brought back.

I want to feel awe. I want her to be astonished. I hope to discover connection. The northern lights, even for a moment, gives us that - connecting generations with wonder. And connecting this old man with a wide-eyed little boy standing next to his cousin at a lake looking up at the sky.

Relaxing at Buckhorn Lake with my auntie

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