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Istill hold onto a gauzy, little-boy memory of the evening when my mother beckoned me onto the front steps of our home in Northern New Jersey. "You'll want to see this," she said in a half-whisper. I stepped outside and there, swirling in the night sky, was a dance of green lights unlike anything I had ever seen.
We stood there, in total peace, watching the lights shimmer for a few minutes. I was about 8, and I remember thinking, "The sky is definitely not supposed to look like this."
That was my first and last encounter with the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis. But now, it's on my bucket list, thanks to a number of affordable cruises to points north, where your chances of encountering the Lights are much greater than lazing away on the front steps of your house in Bergen County, NJ.
Now, if you're lucky, you may not need to book a cruise to see the Northern Lights. Due to a potential "double peak" in the solar cycle, high-intensity auroras are expected to continue through 2026 and likely into 2027. The sun is in the middle of its 11-year solar maximum, which means more solar flares and coronal mass ejections that send charged particles to Earth, causing auroras.
But most of us won't see them, so a cruise is a surer bet.
Certainly, it's possible to see the Lights on a cruise to Alaska with Celebrity, Holland America, Silversea or Princess, or on a trip to Quebec. But if you're after the perfect aurora borealis, consider a cruise to Norway, or perhaps Greenland or Iceland. Many of the top lines stop there.
The Northern Lights — caused by the interaction between a stream of charged particles escaping the sun and our planet's magnetic field, if you like science with your visual poetry — can typically be seen from mid-September to mid-March each year, though it may run longer this year.
The far northern parts of Norway, from Tromsø (setting for the TV documentary "In the Land of the Northern Lights") to Honningsvag to Kirkenes, offer your best bets to catch the Lights, not to mention Norway's scenic ports and spectacular fjords during the daytime.
If you go, drop me a line and tell me if it's as otherwordly as my boyhood memory suggests. If you've seen the Lights, share a photo, I'd love to see!
