carwreck.com: around Boston harbor...

I had gotten an early start from Pier 1 forgetting that the nine hundred twenty-two foot ship was "bow in" and it would take the tugs an extra fifteen minutes to push the ship around so it was facing out of the harbor. So I was taking it easy, heading out slowly and taking time to look around as I crossed President Roads towards Deer Island. A string of six or seven flashing dots sloped up over the Atlantic as planes made their final approach to Logan. How many of these planes were arriving from thousands of miles away? How many had crossed oceans to get here? It almost looked as if the planes were flying right through Orion's Belt.

I'm not sure what made me look up to the north. Something had caught my eye. When I focused on what was attracting my attention I was able to make out wide bands of different colored light in the sky. At first I thought I was seeing lights shining up from the airport or that the bright orange sodium lights at the Deer Island sewage plant were throwing a strange pattern on the humid air. Then it dawned on me that I was looking at the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, and that this was only the second time in my life that I had ever seen them. But why should I be seeing them here in Boston? The puzzle started coming together. Earlier that day someone had mentioned some sort of solar event. "It's bad. We're all gonna' be gone in a few days." joked the guy at the fuel dock. I must have dismissed his comment as being too ridiculous to even contemplate. But as I watched this strange, vague light show I remembered that solar radiation contributes to the Aurora and that was what I was seeing. It all made sense.

The container ship had finished its turn and was picking up speed as it headed out President Roads. I bumped up the throttles bringing the pilot boat alongside the ship to follow it out to the sea buoy where I would take the Pilot off the ship. I wondered, for what far away places was this ship headed.