In the Grand Marais, MN area, summer started a day or two before Labor Day and abruptly ended on the Tuesday afterwards with a thunderstorm that created 107 mph winds in Aurora, MN. Before that thunderstorm, the trees had already started turning brilliant reds. It’s looking like the maples will turn sooner than later, but the birch and aspen are still mostly green.
During what should have been summer, I taught three photography workshops. The first was in Iowa, and I covered it in a previous newsletter. The other two were in the Grand Marais area, and they were night sky workshops. Cook County, the county in which Grand Marais sits, is one of the darkest locations in the Midwest and parts of it are as dark as anywhere in the world.
It makes it a perfect location for night sky photo workshops. Next year I’m running four night sky photo workshops in the county.
Luckily for me, it’s also the county I live in. I live in the woods away from town and can step outside my front door, look north, and see the northern lights. When I look south I see the Milky Way. Most Americans will never experience that. I feel lucky, but in ways it makes me sad that humanity has taken the darkness of night away from everyone and everything.
One of the great discovers I made after moving here was learning about airglow. Airglow is a natural phenomenon similar to the northern lights in that it changes the sky into greens and purples. It’s not something that’s visible to the human eye unless you live or visit a dark sky location. You can see it often as bands in the sky. The two photos above show it and the next one below does as well. It isn’t visible every night, but when it is I love it.
On the nights that it isn’t visible, you still can see WITH YOUR EYES the Milky Way running across the sky from the southernish horizon to the northerish horizon. It’s amazing to be able to see it. When I was a kid, I had heard about it but didn’t see it. The first time I saw it, I couldn’t believe that there was something so beautiful as the Milky Way.
When looking at the Milky Way, it humbles you. It’s made of hundreds of billions of stars with more planets surrounding them than I can imagine. To think that Earth is the only planet with life seems like a misplaced belief to me. The color of the Milky Way and the milkiness of it is partially created by stardust. Everything that we touch was at one time stardust. We are also just a moment of stardust captured by an ever-changing form as we move from baby to adult to elder to worm food.
We are nothing but nothing under the great expanse of it all.
When I’m outside by myself looking up at the night sky, I feel calm. A calm like people say they get during Forest Bathing. Instead of forest bathing, I’m swimming among stars and the Milky Way and feeling calm as my dust joins the great dusty night sky.
But summer and the end of summer isn’t only about the night. Towards these days at the beginning of fall, the sunsets gain magic. August storms bring boomers that glow blue next to the yellows of sunset.
And calm evenings lead us into the night.
But the star of the summer show is always the night sky for me.
Let’s not lose it…
…to humanity’s hubris — its creation of artificial light — or to humanity’s belief that it doesn’t need the experiencing swimming silently under a sky of stars.
Until next time
Goodbye to summer and hello to fall. And goodbye for now and until we meet again in two weeks. I hope you get outside to see the remaining nights of summer.
Wonderful photo‼️ You have the fortune of being able to live in my favorite part of the world. Unfortunately I am not able to live there due to age, physical ability, etc. Please enjoy every minute Bryan.
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Well said and illustrated.
Forest bathing is good for my soul as is capturing the Milky Way and aurora -- two photo genres and lifetime dreams I have just started doing this year after 4+ decades of being a photojournalist, now retired. You are an inspiration -- much appreciated. I also just learned about air glow and bagged that for the first time with my gear in July in the Copper Harbor area of my home state of Michigan. Grand Marias, MN is now a place on my bucket list. Continued dark skies for all of us and future generations.