I always preferred driving to the country house after the sun had ducked below the horizon. The traffic on the Laurentian highway moved quickly and smoothly although the stream of cars was thin and sparse so far away from the island and the city. I was excited to get there and wake up in the morning to jump into a frigid and frosty winter wonderland. Snow was wonderful and sparkled like a million diamonds in the sunlight, refracting into tiny rainbows that could only be seen if you looked close enough into the fluffy, frozen substance. The looming snow banks which ran past the car in awkward blurs seemed dull and sad on the side of the highway. A large stretch of forest was spread out on either side of the road, the trees reaching skyward with brittle and spindly branches that resembled the old, decaying digits of a skeleton unearthed after hundreds of years. Above the jagged tree line was the inky black cloak of the sky, dotted here and there by tiny pinpricks of pale light I determined were either stars, or airplanes.

           It might have been five or ten minutes after my father had claimed we were nearly there that I noticed something reflecting off the charcoal hued clouds further off in the distance. The brilliant electric lights of large cities have the same effect on the sky, leaving a creeping patch of muted light floating over one specific area. The patch that I was staring at through the fogged over window wasn't the ordinary orange and yellow reflection, it was white and turquoise and it was moving and shifting like a huddled group of specters ascending into heaven.

           "Look, Northern Lights." I had never seen the aurora borealis before yet, for some reason, I knew that that's exactly what I was looking at. The misty warmth of my breath landed on the window and I rubbed it away with the dry palm of my hand. It left a greasy looking smudge on the glass, but now I had a clear view of the swaying colours in the sky. My father disagreed and said they were the lights of some town further off, but I knew he was wrong and as I stared, the more I was sure I was right.

           My eyes never left the shifting and glowing aurora as the car continued onward, slowing as my father veered it off of the quiet highway and through the winding, twisting roads toward the wooden house that my grandfather had owned for two decades now. The eerie lights in the sky had disappeared from my view at the car window and as the white Pontiac pulled into the empty lot of our country cabin, I worried that they had disappeared. Opening the car door, I was met with an icy blast of winter air. It was a shock as it filled my lungs since the car had warmed up considerably in its time on the highway. I tilted my head back, staring with glee at the sky above and I felt relieved. I could hear my mother's gasp as she, too, peered at the sky and watched the ghostly, luminous dance of the northern lights. They shifted and swayed, glowing pale green and blue-white as they spread across the black backdrop of the sky in a way that made them seem beautiful and frightening.

           I had never before seen anything like them and I knew then that the majestic and haunting vision of the aurora would follow me for the rest of my life.