Twenty Five Years To Go

It was like a thin, no, thick, no, diffuse  glowing cloud stretching from horizon to horizon that bounced back and forth across Polaris from the Big Dipper to Orion and back again, over and over.  It was a bright ghost that stretched across the sky, and a long plume of milky smoke, and a bank of fog, and pale green cotton candy being pulled apart, and luxuriant flowing hair, and a sunset with tinges of white and red, and a curtain the breeze was blowing through, and the hands of a clock that never seemed to move but really did, and the wisps of snow the wind was blowing across the highway where I had finally stopped, far from the few bright lights of Delta Junction, Alaska where I’m currently on a work assignment.  It was my first glimpse of an aurora, the famed Northern Lights.  The aurora forecast was for a strong one lasting several nights this week, and boy, were they right.

It was beautiful.  I stood there in -20F wind going 20MPH (you do the conversions, I’m busy rhapsodizing) for as long as I could, dove into my rented SUV to warm up by eating from a pint of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate fudge brownie ice cream, and came back out to watch it some more.  All my life I’ve wanted to see an aurora, and one of my dreams has now come true.  

Earlier today, before somebody dropped by my temporary office here to tell me about the strong aurora this week, I had gone to the Internet Death Clock and punched in my numbers.  In a nice, neat, symmetrical number that I’m sure I’ll now remember, the IDC informed me that January 1, 2030 is going to be a rather special day in my life.  I’ve got almost exactly twenty-five years to go.  I found some stuff via IDC I can read to understand what’s going to happen during that quarter century, some things about how it might end, some things I might do to stretch it out a bit.  For the record, enduring two decades as a vegan to gain 3.5 extra years isn’t one of them; I’ll take hundreds of good steaks instead, medium well, thank you very much.  I have some other, more private thoughts about all of this I’ll not bore you with here, except just one more.  And that is, now I’m tempted to go out and get $91.25 in pennies and put them in a bowl, perhaps a wooden one or maybe glass, and take out one a day.

May there be many, many pennies in your bowl, dear reader, and may you with each and every one buy a precious, priceless treasure.  Like a night where the snowy land is lit by the moon and the starry sky is lit by an aurora.  A dream come true.