Getting the flavor of...Upper Canada’s northern lights

Upper Canada’s northern lights

Nature’s northern lights make their appearance on no precise schedule, but now is a particularly good time to seek them out, said Phil Marty in the Chicago Tribune. This spectacular nighttime phenomenon occurs when solar winds interact with Earth’s atmosphere, and the 2012–13 season marks an 11-year peak in the cycle of solar activity. A trip to Blachford Lake Lodge (blachfordlakelodge.com), located 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle near Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, put me “in the belt of heightened activity.” On my first night, the light show started as “a white amorphous blob” that stretched across the sky. Then it took the form of a green column of smoke, “twisting and turning in the sky for five or 10 minutes at a time.” The next night, the show “was almost constant” for two hours. As I watched, “I saw what looked like a green tornado form on the opposite side of the frozen lake, roiling skyward.”

An escape from slavery

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I’d expected that assuming the role of an escaped slave would be an intense experience, said Diana Lambdin Meyer in The Dallas Morning News. But “nothing—nothing”—prepared me for the fear and powerlessness I felt when I visited Conner Prairie Interactive History Park in Fishers, Ind. (connerprairie.org), and became a participant in the park’s 90-minute Follow the North Star program. On most nights in November and April, groups of visitors are ushered into a mock slave auction, “berated unmercifully” if they so much as raise their eyes, then presented with a chance to escape into the dark woods, chased by sounds of dogs and gunfire. A stranger advised us to look for homes with red cloths tied to their doors: These were stops on the Underground Railroad, many owned by Quakers, she said. Eventually, we approached such a door and found safety inside. Even though the experience was invaluable, “I just wanted it to end.”