TRAVELLIVE 11-2017

Watch the Arctic
light dance
It was a very meaningful
moment for the expedition.
Since our trip was on a tight
schedule, we hardly had
time to chat with each other.
During the journey, the person who
I talked to the most was my Greek
companion who was assigned the
same tent with me. Our evening
gatherings therefore was a very
precious time for all of us, especially
when we not having to eat frozen
food. We often grilled reindeer meat
to eat with Swedish bread, a nonfrozen
type of bread that does not
freeze at the temperature of -30 0 C.
The bread is made of whole grains
such as wheat, very rich in protein
and fiber, the perfect food for
travelers like us.
After dinner we opted for a very
interesting challenge - sleeping
without tents. We had to build
ourselves a snow wall to block
the snow that would cover us in
the morning otherwise. Because
the snow was soft and dry, it took
us hours to compress it and then
mould snow blocks of different
sizes. At the end we would use
these snow blocks to build up a
wall about 1 m high to stop the
snowy wind from blowing at us.
For a snow building beginner
like me, my wall was concave and
looked really funny. For the first
time in my life, I slept outside on
the freezing cold snow. All we had
between us and the snow wind was
a wall of snow, a sleeping bag.
The later into the night, the clearer
the sky becomes. You could find
billions of stars in the sky, and
they seemed to get brighter into
the night. I am certain each star
glows in their own way. Since it was
our last night, we hardly slept, but
mostly just lying there gazing at
the starry sky, not wanting to leave.
The beautiful and shimmering
scenery before us felt like a veil that
fell upon us - we felt so small in
comparison to the vastness of our
mother nature.
In that freezing cold evening,
amazing strips of light appeared
in the sky. They constantly moved
and changed shape. Sometimes
like colored ribbons, sometimes as
waves, sometimes like the shape of
spiral rings, sometimes like smoke
streaks. Not everyone of us noticed
this strange phenomenon at first
until someone exclaimed: "Aurora",
"Aurora". Our excitement then was
uncontainable and tearing away at
the silence and the cold night.
The aurora borealis is one of
nature's wonders and that not
everyone is lucky to see. For people
living in countries near the equator,
from the tropical countries, it is
something that one could never see
in their lifetime. As for countries
near the North Pole or right in the
Arctic itself, seeing aurora is one of
the profound beauties that attract
people there. This is why my trip
was made much more complete and
meaningful.
The aurora borealis are also called
the Northern Lights. This is an
optical phenomenon, generated by
the interaction of charged particles
from the solar wind with the
atmospheric layer above the Earth,
creating beautiful rays of light in
the night sky. These light bands are
referred to by the travelers as the
"Dance of Light" with their constant
motion and color change.
I have to admit that they are
incredibly beautiful and intriguing.
They stimulate the imagination, the
exploring mind of a human being
and above all they satisfied my
dreams of conquering the north and
strange new lands.
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TRAVELLIVE