Aurora’s Open

Driving an unfamiliar route chasing nightscapes, taking an unexpected turn, driving into a dead-end local road and find either nothing at all or a pleasant surprise. That’s what it took to land at this spot along Carson Pass in California’s Sierra Nevada range. It’s hard to explain the feeling as I got out of the car, not knowing what I was going to find, then run into this. It’d help knowing all that had happened earlier (or after) but that’s a long story. Anyway, the airglow was so strong, it was popping in the LCD of the camera like nothing I had seen before. It is said you cannot see airglow naked eye, but that night the snow wasn’t just white. That, combined with the snowy landscape the lights in the distance from Lake Tahoe towns, and a completely unexpected aurora, one could almost think this was a shot taken up in Alaska.