Wenn: Reports of aurora visibility as far south as Mount Mitchell. I can’t make it out tonight, but if you aren’t busy, you should see what you can get.
Seeing the northern lights this far south was extremely rare. I didn’t bother setting up any forecast alerts for it, but folks from the photography group we were in checked aurora activity religiously, on the off chance we got lucky here in North Carolina.
I glanced up as Candace took a bite of dessert. Her lips wrapped around the fork, and she made a grateful little sound as the sugar hit her tongue.
It would be after ten by the time we got up there, but it would make for an experience to remember if we could see any of the pinks or greens twisting their way across the sky. And with a long exposure, I’d be able to pick up even more than what was visible to the naked eye.
“What?” Candace asked when I’d been staring too long at my phone.
“How much of that cake do you have?”
“I should have worn all black,” Candace said as she slumped low in the passenger seat of my truck. Her eyes darted out the window, but her voice was laced with unbridled excitement.
“We’re not robbing a bank,” I argued.
“But wearebreaking the rules.”
I rolled my eyes but smiled before shifting the truck into park. “You are such a goody-goody,” I teased as I opened my door to put the chain back across the path.
“Well, yeah,” she called, scooting into the driver’s seat to shout after me. “That’s kind of my brand.”
I chuckled and clipped the barrier back into place.
After we’d shuffled vehicles, putting Candace’s car in my garage where it wouldn’t be noticed by nosy neighbors, we’d made good time on the drive up to Craggy Peak. We’d caught Wenn’s pal at the visitor center just before closing and had given him a large slice of caramel cake to look the other way while we accessed the official-use-only trail for park and emergency service vehicles.
After a quick glance at the aurora projection for the night, it looked like our best odds of catching the phenomenon was between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., so our chances were pretty good. It wouldn’t take me long to get set up. There wasn’t anything discernible in the sky as of yet, but we had plenty of time.
Candace had been more than happy to tag along. Now, sitting in the passenger seat in plaid pajama bottoms with my NC State hoodie swallowing her, she was practically bouncing from excitement.
We reached the overlook, and I passed Candace a headlamp. “It’s really dark up here without ambient city light. I don’t want you to trip over anything. I’ll set up some blankets in the truck bed if you want to hang out back there while I unpack my equipment.”
“Okay,” she squeaked. “I can help.”
With our headlamps on, Candace and I unrolled a mattress pad I used for camping and covered it with a couple of flannel-lined sleeping bags. It was in the low fifties currently, so not too cold, but if we stayed out here for any length of time, I didn’t want Candace to get uncomfortable.
I positioned my tripod and showed her my camera while I clicked through the manual settings.
“So, what’s different about trying to capture the northern lights?” she asked, her gaze focused on the screen.
“Well, with a longer exposure, the camera lens is capable of capturing more light than the human eye ever could. It’ll make the colors more impressive as well as the light from the stars. Everything will be brighter than what you see with the naked eye.”
I searched the sky, and to the west, I could see faint pink hovering over the layers of dark mountains. Pointing, I showed Candace what we were looking for. “I’ll set up here with my wide-angle lens, turn off my autofocus, dial the aperture way low—maybe 1.4—and raise the ISO for light sensitivity, since it’s so dark tonight. Then I’ll use my remote and try some different times. Maybe five-, ten-, twenty-, and twenty-five-second exposures. And then we’ll see where we land and adjust from there.”
“This is so cool,” she said eagerly.
We worked together over the next half hour, taking test shot after test shot. Candace asked me questions, and I explained what I was doing. It was nice having her with me. Usually, Wenn and I worked side by side in comfortable silence. We’d talk a bit, share our settings if something was working particularly well, but despite there being two of us, it wasn’t really a group activity.
I liked sharing this part of myself with Candace. Like with the garden at home, she was interested in the things that interested me. Usually, I was a quiet guy, but talking to Candace about my hobbies made me feel good.
Later, when we were stretched out in the bed of my truck, sleeping bags spread open to keep us warm, we watched the way the pink in the sky steadily intensified. There was even a sliver of green visible. You couldn’t see the colors shifting or the auroras dancing like in the Arctic Circle, but it was still a sight to behold—not something I ever thought I’d see in the mountains of North Carolina.
I had my arm around Candace, and she was tucked up against my side, her body warm and welcome. I thought this might be the most perfect night of my life.
“When did you get into photography?” she asked.
Her voice was quiet in the night, the only human sound among the insects andthe rustling leaves. No doors slamming or engine noise from the highway. There was peace in knowing we were the only people for miles and miles.
“I took a class in college and really enjoyed it. Then I got back into it when I moved back to Kirby Falls. There are so many beautiful places to shoot around here. I joined a photography meetup group in Asheville a few years back. That’s where I met Wenn.”
