Searching for the Northern Lights in Norway -- and the North Shore

Lights Out!

It was another missed “cosmic’ occurrence.

Once again, it was not to be, another in a lifetime of broken dates with the elusive Northern Lights, the rare geomagnetic storm of spectacular color also called the Aurora Borealis.

Breathtaking. Stunning. Shimmering above this giant of a city in translucent green and purple when it lit up the Chicago sky a week or so ago.

But not for me — again.

My travels to every continent but Australia (does Antarctica’s Polar front count?) were not driven totally by my efforts to see the incredible light show.

But for years, I had quietly chased this “hound of heaven” as poet Francis Thompson wrote in 1890: ”down the nights; and down the days; down the arches of the years; down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind.”

Of course, Thompson was chasing God. I was chasing the top item on my bucket list.

So let’s back up.

This past January, I got a call. “Pack your bags,” chirped Leslie Hindman, the auction legend who is a treasured friend.

“Let’s go to Tromso, Norway, and see the Northern Lights,” said she, who has a passport thicker than a two-decker hamburger.

“I’ve just got to see them,” she said. “You want to see them!

“They are tricky and who knows if we’ll ever see them in our lifetime. I’m going anyway. I missed them on the last two trips to Iceland and more before. C’mon. Let’s go!”

Soup of the day is ... reindeer?

Let’s be clear. The sky is not always clear in Tromso, Norway, which is known as the Arctic capital, an Aurora sweet spot.

It is also freezing in this pristine village where the sun never sets above the Arctic circle;,where meat on the menu is primarily reindeer, and “COD is GOD!”

So I signed on, joining Leslie and her beloved sister-in-law, Maron Hindman, on a trip where it was snowing upon landing, dark upon arriving, freezing checking in and even colder checking out. And in between? Try dining next to the arctic blast of an open restaurant door when the pizza oven overheats.

What do you do during the day, while waiting for nightfall and a possible peak at the Northern Lights?

We three went dog sledding, stuffed in triple-layer, below freezing duds, looking like three plump Michelin tires before our late night skywatch. Natch.

And that night? We got skunked.

Clouds had rolled in. Our Arctic “sky voyage” via a boat on the Barents Sea was ditched.

So, Leslie rolled out a last ditch effort to find a clear night sky, hiring a guide armed with special Aurora Borealis “Apps;” and took us on a come-hell-or-high-water car chase to find the elusive night lights.

“Leslie doesn’t give up,” chirped Maron.

Three hours later, hit by a sudden blizzard that swamped our driver’s filthy windshield, we were stuck on a hill going up while our hopes were going down. Our driver used his instinctive skills to go blindly downhill “backing up” into a main road! Lordy!

And did I add we lost the tour guide for 20 minutes when he left the car to patrol the sky (and ostensibly to answer another of nature’s calls), while the snowstorm was working its way into a blizzard?

Thus, we called it a day that night around 2 a.m. in desperate need of a survival martini. Then it was bye bye to the village that following afternoon.

No place like home?

And go figure,

Four months later, on May 9, a TV alert signaled the Chicago sky was about to light up via a solar storm. I put my throttle in gear for what became a useless three-hour, drive around the North Shore late that Friday evening, stopping at intervals to study the sky. Still hopeful, I set my alarm for another attempt after 3 a.m. but wound up surrendering to sleep and shutting off the alarm — moments before a phosphorescent sky erupted across the Chicago area.

But luckily for JoAnn Seagren, she didn't turn her alarm off. The close Chicago friend of Leslie Hindman did rise in the wee hours of May 10 and headed to Lincoln Park, where she sat alone on a bench in the darkness, waiting in hopes of a celestial storm.

There, near the corner of Astor Street and North Avenue, sometime between 3:15 and 3:45 a.m., Seagren snapped it all up.

“It was a quiet and solitary experience to feel all at once connected to the whole of the universe … nothing expected like that in the heart of Chicago … and then, it suddenly happened,” said Seagren. “Falling, falling in the sky … green and then purple.”

Heck, Seagren’s bravery in a sitting in a Chicago park alone at night these days is enough of a tale to tell.

Like me, Leslie Hindman also missed Chicago’s sky dance. Next sky stop: Fairbanks, Alaska. Maron Hindman will no doubt join her in the fun.

And Sneed will no doubt continue to howl at the moon. 



Sneedlings…

Saturday birthdays;:Country singer George Strait, 72; actress Tina Fey, 54 … Sunday birthdays; rock star Peter Townshend, 79; British actor James Fox, 85; actress Grace Jones, 76; singer Sam Smith, 32.