Phenomenal: Searching for Wonder in Sweden

Phenomenal
A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World

By Shannon Broderick

Leigh Ann Henion has contributed to The Washington Post Magazine, Smithsonian, Orion, and Oxford American, among other publications. Henion’s debut book, Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World, was a New York Times bestseller. Her work has been cited in three editions of The Best American Travel Writing. She lives in the mountains of North Carolina.

In her debut book, Henion recounts her search for spiritual understanding after the birth of her son, Archer. The journey takes her all over the world, from volcanic eruptions in Hawai’i to solar eclipses in Australia. Here, Henion writes about seeing the Northern Lights in Sweden.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love, had these comments about the book: “What a cool and fascinating ride. Leigh Ann Henion has tackled one of the great questions of contemporary, intelligent, adventurous women: Is it possible to be a wife and mother and still explore the world? Her answer seems to be that this is not only possible but essential. This story shows how. I think it will open doors for many.”

Heartfelt and awe-inspiring, Leigh Ann Henion’s Phenomenal is a moving tale of physical grandeur and emotional transformation, a journey around the world that ultimately explores the depths of the human heart. A journalist and young mother, Henion combines her own varied experiences as a parent with a panoramic tour of the world’s most extraordinary natural wonders.

Excerpt from the book–Chapter 5, Northern Lights, Sweden

When we meet up later that evening in a wood-built, heated dining room, I tell James that as much as I’d like to see the northern lights, I’m also hoping to hear them. Every year, thousands of people report that they’ve heard the aurora. I’ve met nearly half a dozen witnesses myself, all in the space of a few days. What they claim to hear isn’t the impossible-to-make-out waves of infrasound that have been recorded in the aurora at high altitudes.

Leigh Ann Henion
Leigh Ann Henion

No, they claim to have been witness to the yet-to-be-recorded or scientifically explained, totally audible phenomenon that is the lights’ signature song. There is an ancient precedent for this. The Sami word for the aurora is guovssahs, which roughly translates as “the lights that make noise.”

James is skeptical. “I’ve spent thousands of hours with the aurora and I’ve never heard it before,” he says, temporarily distracted by a young man who’s come into the dining area.

James watches as the guy whispers to a group of diners, who rise from their seats. Swedes aren’t known for loud proclamations, and James knows what this might mean. Even when you’re not outside, you have to be on alert if you want to catch the lights.

Northern Lights…Phenomenal!

He gets up and motions for me to follow. We’re joined by an increasingly wide stream of people as we rush toward the doors. I have never felt more like a stereotypically loud American in my life, but I can’t help but shout to a curious-looking couple as we pass their table: “Northern lights!”

We burst outside to find a crowd already gathered. Above, the aurora is tingling toward the bottom of its arc. The lower sections look like pink fingers dancing across an invisible piano. They extend down in various lengths. Pinky finger. Pointer. The upper stretch of the slender solar storm is somehow more delicate than I’d imagined it to be. It’s a wisp of color.

Phenomenal
The Aurora Borealis always makes a classic picture

Stars are visible in the background as it slithers and twirls, shrinks and spreads. The arc it traces is, I realize, the curve of earth. This sky show is revealing the contours of the very planet on which we stand.

James shouts: “Look! Pink! That’s about as good as it gets.” The top of the aurora is glowing green, but the animate bottom of the arch is pink as Archer’s nose after a day of playing in the snow.

“Amazing!” someone shouts from the crowd that’s gathered outside the restaurant’s doors.

“I should get my camera out,” James says, shivering in his fleece vest. In the rush, he couldn’t find his outer jacket, but he knows the aurora doesn’t wait. It can disappear as unexpectedly as it arrives. “This is the best I’ve seen in weeks and weeks,” James tells me, the aurora fluttering like a glowing curtain in a celestial breeze.

The aurora’s tingling pink energy dances, pounding out a visual song. The lamps around the restaurant can’t compete with its power, its undeniable brightness. It is revealing the edge of our atmosphere. We are seeing a visceral meeting of space and earth, the bit of pure sunshine that has slipped through all protective measures to shine on our faces. It is, in essence, a visual reminder of life’s tentative covenant with the universe. Like Alan said in Venezuela: If the sun changed its temperature, even a little, we’d be toast.

“The sky is bursting into pink flashes—I mean, when does that happen?” James says.

Well, now, for instance. I can’t speak. I’m trying to focus, attempting to let the street lamps and crowds of the ICEHOTEL fall away. But just as I’m beginning to get a feel for the lights, just as I have gathered myself together so that I might be able to think about what I’m seeing—turning to explanations of nitrogen and oxygen instead of standing here, dazzled, in a stupefied gaze—the lights disappear. They don’t slip off stage left; no, they twirl themselves into nothingness as spontaneously as they appeared.

Buy this book on Amazon: Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World

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