Anna DanbyUnited by wonder 
For a fleeting moment this week we were brought together through a shared desire to marvel at the natural world. Seeing the Northern Lights in Scotland is a rare treat that doesn’t grace our skies very often.
Like many of us I was aimlessly scrolling Facebook on Sunday evening when a bright green glow caught my eye. ‘Northern Lights in Scotland seen from the CIC hut on Ben Nevis’ – wow, when was that? I voiced this out loud to Si, sitting across the room, also scrolling. ‘I guess we better look outside’ came back in response.
From unremarkable to unforgetable
In that moment an unremarkable evening destined to go nowhere became unforgettable. Plunging the house into darkness we stepped outside and turned our eyes to the sky. At first nothing, but then an unusual glow made itself known over the northern hills and as our eyes tuned in the sky was dancing. Pointing my phone skyward revealed even more dramatic colours and we knew we were witnessing the famed Northern Lights. The Mirrie Dancers. Aurora Borealis. A huge smile spread across our faces, and we revelled in such beauty making itself known on our doorstep.
What are the Northern Lights?
Aurora Borealis are a natural phenomenon caused by periods of intense activity on our sun known as solar storms. These cause an increase in energy and particles travelling through space towards Earth and when they reach our atmosphere they react with its gasses causing these beautiful light displays. Oxygen glows green and red, Nitrogen blue and purple. It’s science and it’s wonderful.
Your best change of seeing Northern Lights in Scotland are dark, clear winter nights during cold settled weather. Find a place with a clear view of the Northern sky, ideally away from light pollution, find a comfy position and settle in and watch a while. At first they might not look like much, the colours in photos appear much brighter than they do to the naked eye. However, once your vision tunes in you will be amazed at what you see.
The power of wonder
The only other time I have seen the Northern Lights was on a university field trip to the Isle of Rum. One night we were visiting the nocturnal Manx Shearwater population. Whilst scrambling a mountainside in the dark, birds scurrying beneath our feet, the skies unexpectedly glowed green. We looked on in disbelief, the surprise making the experience even more special. This field trip was a turning point in my appreciation of the power of wonder and its vital role in our relationship with the natural world.
I dug out the assignment I wrote for the associated module, environmental education: concept-based practice. It is entitled Rum: experiencing complexity, wonder and simplicity. Reading it back I realise how much from that time directly influences my every day now:
An extract reads thus:
‘Opportunities to delight in the beauty and ingenuity of the world in which we live are vital because the sense of wonder they create is what drives us to want to become more ecologically literate (Orr, 1992). Emotional responses to natural phenomena can be the stimulus from which questions are asked, resulting in cognitive knowing (Kals, Schumacher, & Montada, 1998)…
This fusion of emotion with intellect could be important to the kind of knowing required to encourage sustainable lives. Although the determinants of behavioural change are numerous, complex and incompletely understood, attitudes are identified as an influencing factor in several models (see Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002). It has been suggested that increasing environmental knowledge is enough to change attitudes and resultantly behaviour (Hungerford & Volk, 1990). However, Pooley and O’Connor (2000) found that environmental attitudes are affected not only by cognition but also by affect; emotions and feelings…
Thus, close up and personal encounters with the natural world can stir emotions, sparking cognitive investigation and further improvements in ecological literacy and sending visitors home with a desire to protect the natural world awakened in their hearts as well as their minds.’
Wonder in the everyday
The words are a bit clunky and I like to think that fourteen years on I write more eloquently but the sentiment runs true and is a big part of the underpinning ethos of ‘Wild Roots’. It is why I guide people in the mountains in the way I do.
Seeing the country united in wonder this week, the smiles spread far and wide has been special, but it has also highlighted how this isn’t an everyday feeling for most people.
You don’t have to wait for a once in a lifetime experience to benefit from wonder, it is everywhere in the natural world. Just pay attention and it will make itself known.
I’ll leave you with Mary Oliver’s wise words:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
