Hinkypunk Station

I am pretty easily impressed and awed by nature.  Whale sharks impress me (so big!), Thailand rock...things impress me (so topsy turvy!), the Amazon rainforest has always deeply impressed me (so many creatures!).  Pretty much everything but mountains impresses me on some level.

But at the top of the list is the Northern Lights.  You can tell how impressed I am by the fact that I'm devoting a whole blog post to say how amazingly mysterious they are.  After all, I only blog about the most meaningful things.  But look at them!!!

  

Aren't they just the most mysterious and lovely things in the world?  I guess they aren't technically mysterious, since science explains them, but they're still mysterious.  A long while ago, LivingSocial offered a trip to Alaska for a Northern Lights expedition trip.  I don't remember the price or the dates, but I still check their website to see if it comes back up again.  There are lot of places/things I'd like to see and of course most of them I probably never will, like the Great Wall of China or (*tear*) the pyramids.  These, on the other hand, feel more possible since I can see them without leaving the continent.  Alaska's just a quick jaunt up the road.

As a random aside, the Northern Lights are one of the very few things I remember from The Golden Compass (those, and the polar bears [ARMORED polar bears]).  "Remember" is probably overstating it--I remember there were Northern Lights and they were terribly mysterious.  Is anyone counting how many times I say "mysterious" in this post?


I should also probably note, for posterity's sake, that I think I can trace my initial fascination back to the hours spent playing as Cammy on Street Fighter 2.  Showing here:

 (Ugh, DeeJay)

Anyway.  Let's look at more pictures of the Lights.