October has been a month of stargazing.
Not only have I started to need a torch on my evening dog walks as the nights darken, but the skies have offered some rare treats.
Earlier this month I ran barefoot to the garden in my pyjamas in the late evening when I heard the aurora borealis was visible across Devon. A subtle pink shimmer across the skies was revealed as an explosion of colour through my camera lens. I stood on an old tree stump for an hour watching as the night sky shifted through pinks, purples and greens, and shards of light stretched from the horizon to the clouds.
Seeing the Northern Lights was a true bucket list moment for me, and seeing them from my garden was incredible.
My only wish was that I could have captured these images better.
Another celestial event occured last week, which found me stumbling around a cow field in the near dark in an effort to capture it on film. The Hunter’s Moon – the biggest and brightest moon to be seen this year was obscured by thick cloud cover, sadly leaving me to walk into a bog (which Meg nimbly avoided) in the absence of a guiding moonlight.
The failed mission to capture the moon was later saved by the same tree stump that gave me front row seats to the aurora a week earlier. As I watched the moon slowly rise in a clearing sky, my garden bathed in moonlight gave the familar trees a ghostly air. I will win no accolades for my photography skills with this effort, but the experience was magical.
It has taught me that you don’t need to travel far from home to experience the extraordinary – and to keep looking up.
