The news said a solar light show was possible, but that the sky would be mostly cloudy. I’m not much of a night owl anyway, so I had decided it wasn’t worth the chase. However, I decided to see how the fall color was looking around Mount Hood. It was late afternoon when I went by the Lake Trillium turn off, and on a whim I decided “What the heck, I’m here anyway…”

The clouds were broken at that point, and what I really thought I would be photographing was sunset. When I explored the lake edge, I thought these rocks were a decent composition. I went back to the car and cooked supper, then returned to set up the tripod and hang out to see if the sky had color at sunset. Nope, not much. A couple of other photographers had arrived by then, hoping for the northern lights, and that inspired me to hang around just to see what would happen. Beginning at about 8 pm, this did.