by John Jefferson

 

In 1969, Baker Rudolph, a friend of mine from Coleman, and I were returning from a fishing trip to one of the border lakes, when we encountered a baffling scene.

We were still shaking off the remnants of cultural exchange from visiting a foreign country. As we motored along, our conversation was nonstop except when the one listening quickly inserted a comment about the other’s narrative, usually attempting to take the podium, himself.

Then, something unexpectedly occurred. And we went silent. After almost ten minutes – a record verbal pause for us – I muttered, “Uuuh…”. Baker answered, “I saw it, too!” He hit the brakes and pulled over onto the grassy shoulder.

I recently ran across a news item from Indiana from late October this year that told of a solar flare that occurred then that sent high energy particles toward Earth. One source called that “coronal mass ejections (CMEs)”. As much fun as the sound of that evokes, it’s not what you might think.

The Library of Congress defines that phenomenon as causing “shafts or curtains of colored light visible on occasion in the night sky.

When these particles contact our atmosphere, the news item said it is possible they could cause the “Northern Lights” to be spotted much farther south – like northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio. Those are not counties in North Texas.

The article concluded by saying expect the scene north of Indiana. That’s also not in Texas. The Northern Lights (AKA Aurora Borealis) had never been viewed from Texas.

Baker and I sat on the fenders in the dark along that lonely road and watched it for 10 or 15 minutes. It reminded me of gas flares from the oil patch. But then it seemed to jump to the other side of the road. And back again. Sometimes visible on both sides of the road. Baker finally said he was getting spooked and wanted to move on. Good thing the coyotes hadn’t started howling about then out in the brush.

We stopped for coffee and a snack at a popular restaurant and told the attractive waitress what we had seen. She looked at us like she had heard most lines, but this one was really weird. It was.

We got back to Austin very late. I told my wife what we had seen. She asked if we had been drinking. We hadn’t been, while driving.

The next morning, there was a small mention in the American Stateman that almost made me spit my coffee across the bed. The headline read, “Northern Lights Visible in South Texas.” The brief article went on to say this was the first time in recorded history that anyone had ever seen them there, and that they had not been seen anywhere else in the state except a few isolated places south of San Antonio.

Atmospheric conditions apparently had to be just right for this to be viewed.

And perhaps it was such a shock to wildlife that it left the coyotes speechless.

JJ