Through the night of Friday the 11th of May 2024 and into the morning of the 12th, the skies over northern and central Europe were charged with the largest electromagnetic storm I’d ever heard about. I didn’t see a thing of it, aside from the photos online.
I was at a music and arts festival with some friends on the outskirts Brussels, Horst, travelling there and back from the city each day. On the coach home, Saturday morning, getting on past 2am, we were shocked to learn what we’d missed. It was too late by then. We couldn’t have seen it if we’d tried. Our attempts walking through the empty night-lit city from the coach stop to our apartment were fruitless too.
To see pink and green magnetic electricity rain from the sky, we reckoned, must have been an awakening experience for many. How often do people experience something connecting them with the universe like that? I was sad to have missed it, an event where people and maybe some animals across the continent looked up and thought, wow, or woof, there are things much bigger and more significant than us.
Huddled over my phone on the coach scrolling photos and news articles vicariously, I contacted my mum, “Did you see the northern lights??”. A once in a lifetime aurora we’d missed, but we’d had our own existential enlightening.