aurora borealis

#1125: Purple Rain, Purple Sky – Five New Things at the Lake

RECORD STORE TALES #1125: Purple Rain, Purple Sky

“I want to do something new this weekend,” goes the eternal complaint. Even with Lake Huron in front of us, and a lush green paradise all around, sometimes I still moan about doing the same things every weekend.

There is so much you can do, but only a couple days to do it all.  It’s easy to fall into comfortable habits and just…relax.  However, the cottage is too special to just relax.  Surely, I’ve had some of the best sleeps of my life there, but you don’t want to sleep your day away, as easy as it can be.

As always, we started the trip on the front porch.  We always like to listen to music on our night of arrival, as the sun sets.  This time, we chose Prince’s Purple Rain, which I didn’t own last year.  This music was new to the cottage, and it was an absolutely incredible experience.  I danced around the porch to “Computer Blue”, but the sun was setting just as Prince began singing about the “Purple Rain”.  It was a surreal experience hearing Prince sing “Ooo, ooo, ooo,” as the orange and pink clouds slowly let the sun sink beneath the horizon.  It felt like Prince was there in the forest somewhere, just out of sight.

New thing #1 achieved:  “Purple Rain” at sunset.

We always like to experiment with food.  Believe it or not, we have not made homemade burgers at the lake in decades.  Why?  My dad used to hate cooking them, as they’d fall to pieces on the grill.  Not anymore.  Thanks to a tip from my good buddy Thuss, we now are making our own homemade burgers.  The secret:  Freeze them.  Once frozen, those patties stay together and do no break apart.  For our first batch, this was our successful blend:

  • Lean beef (Jen wanted extra lean but I said no)
  • Ground thick cut bacon
  • 1 egg
  • Bread Crumbs
  • Parmesan flakes
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Paprika
  • Chili flakes
  • Minced fresh garlic
  • Minced fresh onion
  • Ketchup
  • Mustard
  • Olive oil

I don’t know how much of that we could actually taste, but it was fun and the result was juicy and perfect.  And then next batch is already in the freezer waiting to be cooked up, with a new set of ingredients including local beef.

New thing #2 achieved:  Perfect homemade burgers on the grill.

But wait, there’s more!  Thanks to a new, deep cast iron frying pan, we also fried our own french fries.  No more oven baked fries, or air fries!  Only the real deal.  They were crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and perfect all around.

New thing #3 achieved:  Golden brown french fries.

To quote ZZ Top:  I AM your burger man.

“My charcoal’s getting red hot,
Put your order in my hand,
Won’t you let me show you what I got,
Sizzling in the pan.”

I woke up on the Saturday morning as I often do, bright and early.  It was damp and cold with not a single human to be seen, myself excluded.  It’s a good time to spot wildlife.  There have been bears in the area, but I did not see one.  Instead, I saw a red canid coming up the path from the beach.  A fox?  I had not seen our local fox up there in at least a year.  This animal had the gait of a fox, but not the bushy red and white tail.  This animal had a thin, bony tail, and its frame was larger than a fox.

It was a coyote.  My first coyote sighting, ever.  I’ve heard them at night, but never seen one in the fur before.

New thing #4 achieved:  Coyote sighting!

I knew there was no way I’d be able to grab my phone in time.  I simply watched the confident, unafraid animal stroll down our little dirt road as if he was the only one in the world.

Of course, all of this would pale in comparison to the Aurora Borealis.  I’d never seen the Northern Lights before.  I did my best to describe the experience, but words and pictures do not capture the awe.  It felts as if we were all under a huge electric dome.  It is something I’ll never forget even if I never see it again.  It began suddenly and dimly, before the lights were all you could see anywhere, in every direction.  The lights reflected off the waters, and created beautiful patterns in the ripples.

New thing #5 achieved:  Aurora Borealis

New experiences are not always possible at the lake, nor are they always necessary.  Sometimes it’s enough to just sit on the porch and watch the days go by.  After 52 years of coming to the exact same location, to have so many new sights, sounds and flavours in one weekend was unexpected.

The cottage is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get!

 

#1124: Aurora Borealis

RECORD STORE TALES #1124: Aurora Borealis

52 years of coming to the cottage, since my very birth, and there are still new things to see.

I used to think I was too far south to ever see the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis).  Certainly it has never happened before.  However, we are heading into a Solar Maximum, which means a high point in the sun’s 11 year cycle of activity.  The sun’s magnetic field is a twisty turny-thing, and every 11 years, it gets twisted up into an increasingly excited state, and the sun ejects massive eruptions of particles into the surrounding space.  When our Earth eventually collides with the charged particles, they create brilliant shows of light in the sky.  There are both northern and southern borealis, and in northern Canada, people can see the lights easily.  Where I live in the southern tip, we never see the lights!

May 10, around 10:15 PM, the lights came to visit the shores of Lake Huron.

Jen and I headed down to the beach, as the Boston Bruins were getting mauled by the Florida Panthers.  I kept my eyes north, assuming that was where I would see the lights.  Disappointed, I shouted back at Jen, “There’s nothing yet.”

I noticed something as I looked back at her.  The sky was “hazy”,

“Is that it?” I asked Jen as I looked straight up.  There was a cloudy streak across the sky.

Then I looked south and saw the horizon glowing green.  The northern lights were not coming from the north!  They were all around us, in every direction, like a glowing curtain!  It was not at all what I expected to see.

The light show peaked for about 15 minutes, on a very cold night.  The lights shifted and changed, ever so slowly, so that you barely noticed.  You could stare at a band of green until it faded and was suddenly replaced by swirls of red.  The moon was a sharp crescent and it cut a hole through a band of green, as did a handful of bright stars.

Photographs and videos, of course, only tell part of the story, and only insofar as technology can capture.  The real colours and the subtle wispy cloudy bands we saw are lost in photos.

Directly overhead appeared to be the center of it all.  Radiating out from a central point were bands of cloudy white, like a celestial starfish.  Jen and I pondered this and wondered if the solar particles were hitting at that point.

I wish I had been listening to “Purple Rain” at that moment.  It did almost look like purple rain at times.

Jen and I had a moment on the previous night, listening to “Purple Rain” during sunset.  It was an uplifting, somewhat surreal moment to hear Prince soloing and singing over the sight of the glowing sky.  Imagine if we had it playing during the borealis!

The bone-chilling cold of the Kincardine night cut our visit short, but I can now say I’ve seen the Northern Lights.

Bucket list achieved.