Northern Lights December 1, 2011

It was late October. I walked out one evening while cleaning up the day’s press job during the harvest. I could hear the water in the wind so just looked up toward the lake. The early season lake effect clouds were breaking up above the horizon and a few twinkles were in between. I stopped to figure out which stars they were — it’s just the second nature of the long time stargazer.

Then I suddenly noticed that the background sky was brightening. It took a few seconds to realize what was going on as it had been quite a while since I saw the last one of those. It was just the white glow while I watched, but the following morning there were a number of posts on my Facebook wall telling me how magnificent the aurora display was. The return of the northern lights, that was exactly what I was feeling the night before.

Another year is nearing the end and the holiday season is with us. This is again the time to reflect what’s passing and look forward to what’s coming. As our Sun has the 11-year solar cycle, we are all in the midst of the changing seasons in the stream called time. Thorpe Vineyard will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in just over a year from now. My crew and I are talking about how it will be — we don’t know yet. But we are sure that it will be a memorable year for all of us. So we hope you will join us as you have until now.