“By the time you read this, I’ll be gone for the year. I left with the annual southbound migration. Songbirds, hummingbirds, raptors, monarch butterflies, hand-sized common green darner dragonflies, downstaters, out-of-staters, and me,” writes Tim Mulherin, author of This Magnetic North: Candid Conversations on a Changing Northern Michigan. “About 10 p.m. on a Sunday night in September, a Cedar neighbor excitedly posted, ‘The northern lights are on!’ So I forced myself out of bed and went outside. Peering through the stand of towering sugar maple trees on the northside of our property, I instantly discerned that telltale ghostly glow. Minutes later, I was leaning against my car in a nearby vacant lot, awed by the incredible celestial light show.”
