Sleep under the dancing aurora in a private sanctuary made of crystal and warmth.
Night 1: The Arrival (Or: Earth Looks Different After Five Years on Mars)
Let me paint you a picture: I'm standing in the arrivals terminal at Rovaniemi Airport, Finland, experiencing full Earth gravity (9.8 m/s²) for the first time in five years, and my knees are genuinely questioning their life choices. Captain Mbeki said I needed a vacation before the Titan mission. My doctor said I needed "gravity acclimatization." My therapist said I needed to "reconnect with my homeworld."
Nobody said it would involve a helicopter ride into the Arctic Circle at -30°C.
The helicopter descends through a curtain of snow—actual snow, not frozen CO₂ like Mars dust storms—and suddenly, silence. The kind of silence that has weight, but different from space-silence. This is Earth-silence: thick with atmosphere, pressurized, breathable without a suit. The Kakslauttanen wilderness spreads below, a canvas of white broken by the gentle glow of glass domes scattered like jewels.
Back on Mars, we'd call these habs "radiation exposure hazards." On Earth, they call them "luxury."
The science says the glass igloos are made of thermal glass: triple-layered, maintaining +21°C interior while exterior hits -30°C, with condensation prevention systems and aurora-optimized transparency. The experience? Stepping into my assigned igloo feels like entering a spaceship, except the viewport faces down toward a planet instead of out toward space, and that planet is the one I'm supposedly from.
My igloo is a perfect sphere: bed facing the sky (Earth's sky, blue-black at this latitude in winter), heated floors (luxury I haven't felt since Lagos), and total silence except for the faint hum of climate systems. The bed is enormous—gravity means you need more cushioning, I'd forgotten that. The pillow is soft. Martian pillows are vacuum-sealed and strategic. This is decadent.
I lie down, staring up through curved glass at clouds and stars. Somewhere up there, past those clouds, past that thick nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, Mars is a rust-red dot. I've spent five years calling that dot home. Now I'm here, on the planet where I was born, feeling like a tourist in my own species' homeworld.
My grandmother Adanna never left Nigeria. Never saw the Arctic, never experienced negative temperatures (Lagos barely drops below 20°C). She used to tell me, "Ụwa bụ ebe ọma, mana elu igwe bụ ebe ịrụ ụka gị" (The world is good, but the sky is where your dreams live).
She died while I was on my first Mars mission—seven months travel time meant I missed the funeral by three months. I never got to tell her about Saturn's rings, about methane lakes on Titan, about the auroras I've seen from space: Earth's green and red glow from orbit, Jupiter's ultraviolet storms, Mercury's x-ray fluorescence.
Tomorrow, I'll see Earth's aurora from the surface. From inside the atmosphere. The way Grandmother Adanna would have seen it, if she'd ever left Lagos.
Cost breakdown for five days in the Arctic (because my Mars colleagues always ask): ₦18,500,000 Nigerian naira (roughly $27,000 USD) for the glass igloo, helicopter transfers, all meals, and guided expeditions. ₦4,500 for the thermal clothing rental (because my wardrobe is optimized for pressurized habitats, not actual weather). ₦0 for the gravity adjustment pain in my joints—that's free and involuntary.
The aurora forecast app on my phone (still strange to have weather that isn't just "dust storm yes/no") shows an 85% probability tonight. KP index 6 (strong geomagnetic activity). Solar wind density elevated. Back on Mars, this would mean radio interference and potential hazard for surface operations. Here, it means beauty incoming.
I set the Aurora Alert and close my eyes. The bed is too soft. The air is too thick. The gravity is too heavy. I'm home, and it feels alien.
Night 2: The Aurora Speaks (Or: Earth's Magnetosphere Puts on a Show)
At 2:47 AM, a soft chime wakes me. The Aurora Alert. I open my eyes expecting the usual: those familiar green and red bands I've seen from the ISS during transfers, from Mars orbit during aurora observations, from every planetary approach where magnetic fields interact with solar wind.
Let me paint you a picture—and I mean this literally, because what I see makes my astrophysicist brain short-circuit:
The entire sky is on fire. Not with flames—with ribbons of green and purple light, dancing in patterns that seem almost intentional. Almost choreographed. Streaming across the atmosphere in waves that pulse and shimmer, fold and unfold, reaching from horizon to horizon in a display that makes every aurora photograph I've ever seen look like a sad underexposure.
The science says aurora borealis occurs when solar wind particles (mostly electrons and protons) collide with Earth's atmospheric gases at altitudes of 100-300 km, exciting oxygen atoms (green light, 557.7 nm wavelength) and nitrogen molecules (purple-blue, 428 nm wavelength), with intensity dependent on solar activity and magnetic field geometry. The experience? I'm crying. Again. (I'm starting to think "professional hazard of being in the awe business" is just my personality now.)
I've seen seventeen different planets. I've watched Jupiter's aurora from 10,000 km away—ultraviolet storms covering areas larger than Earth. I've observed Saturn's polar hexagon, Neptune's methane-scattered halos, even Mercury's weak magnetic fluorescence. But I've never—never—seen aurora from inside an atmosphere, lying in warmth while the sky performs overhead.
The Sámi people (indigenous to this region for 10,000+ years—longer than recorded history) called this guovssahas: the light you can hear. I always thought that was metaphorical. Lying here, in my glass cocoon at +21°C while outside is -32°C and the sky pulses with electromagnetic poetry—I understand. Some lights speak directly to the soul, bypassing the optic nerve entirely.
I grab my phone (still weird to have cellular reception—Mars has line-of-sight laser comms only) and call Amara. It's 8 PM on Mars, she should be awake.
She answers via video link, and her face—that eight-year-old face that's never seen Earth's blue sky—lights up. "Dr. Aisha! Did you see the aurora?"
"I'm seeing it now," I say, flipping the camera to show the display. "From the surface. From inside."
"What does it sound like?"
The eternal question. "It doesn't make sound—not really. The air is too thin up where it happens. But it feels like it should. Like watching lightning with the volume off."
"Is it better than Saturn's aurora?"
The science says they're different phenomena: Saturn's aurora is driven by interaction between its magnetosphere and Enceladus's water vapor plumes, creating persistent polar displays. Earth's is solar wind interaction with dipole magnetic field, creating transient but intense displays. The experience? "Saturn's is bigger. Earth's is ours."
She nods like that makes sense. "My teacher said you're coming back to Mars after your vacation."
"After I remember how to walk in full gravity, yes."
"And then you're going to Titan?"
"If I survive five days in the Arctic, yes."
She grins. "Don't die. I want to hear about Titan."
"Deal."
After we disconnect, I lie back down, watching the aurora pulse and shift. Grandmother Adanna would have loved this. She spent seventy-four years on one planet, never saw more than three countries, never experienced temperatures below 15°C, never witnessed atmospheric phenomena beyond tropical rainstorms. She gave me permission to leave—to chase those dreams in the sky—but she never got to see what I've seen.
The aurora tastes like... nothing, I'm inside. But the idea of it tastes like magnetic fields and possibility. The glass between me and the sky feels like protection and separation. My grandmother's absence tastes like grief I've been avoiding for five years by staying away from Earth.
Back on Mars, we'd call this self-care. On Earth, I'm learning to call it "confronting things you've been running from at interplanetary distances."
The aurora dances for another hour, then fades as the solar wind shifts. I fall asleep watching stars—Earth stars, the ones I memorized as a child in Lagos, now half-forgotten after years of Martian sky.
Day 3: The Wilderness (Or: Rediscovering a Planet I'd Forgotten)
Dawn breaks at 10 AM this far north—68° latitude, inside the Arctic Circle where winter means polar night and summer means midnight sun. The sun doesn't rise so much as suggest itself: a slow golden bleed across the horizon that lasts for hours, like the planet is considering whether it wants to bother with daylight today.
My guide, Mikko—Sámi reindeer herder, third-generation Arctic guide, has the weathered face of someone who's survived more winters than I've survived space missions—arrives with a team of huskies. Six dogs, all pulling at their harnesses with excitement that transcends species barriers.
"You're the space doctor," Mikko says, not a question. "Captain Mbeki told me you need to remember Earth."
"He talks too much."
"He said you'd say that."
The sled cuts through fresh powder. The dogs run with pure joy—no complicated motivation, no existential questioning, just the simple mathematics of movement and pack dynamics. I'm bundled in borrowed thermal gear (rated to -50°C, which is colder than Mars equatorial night but in much thicker atmosphere so the heat loss dynamics are different), holding onto the sled rail while Mikko steers.
The landscape is white. Not rust-red, not butterscotch sky, not orange haze—white. Snow covering everything, ice forming on every surface, a monochrome that my eyes have to relearn after years of Martian color schemes. The sun hangs low, golden, warm light that manages to feel cold.
We visit ice caves that glow blue from within—light scattering through crystalline structure, same physics as Titan's ice but formed by terrestrial water in Earth gravity at Earth temperatures. The blue is the color of oxygen-scattered sunlight through ice, and it's gorgeous in a way that makes me remember why humans evolved aesthetics on this planet specifically.
Then frozen waterfalls: water (actual H₂O, not methane, not ammonia) suspended mid-flow, crystallized by temperature into sculptures that will melt come spring (a seasonal cycle Mars doesn't have anymore, not since the atmosphere thinned 3.5 billion years ago).
At noon (the sun barely climbs 5 degrees above the horizon before starting to set again—polar day length is weird), we reach a reindeer camp. The Sámi herders—families who've lived here for 300+ generations, who survived ice ages and climate change and colonization and modernity—share food around a fire.
Lunch is salmon: smoked over birch wood, prepared by Aila (Mikko's sister, speaks four languages, has a PhD in Arctic ecology but chose traditional herding over academia—I respect this deeply). The taste is clean, fatty, alive in a way that protein paste on Mars absolutely isn't.
"You've been to Mars," Aila says, not a question.
"For five years. Before that, three missions to the belt, two to Jupiter's moons."
"Do you miss Earth?"
The science says humans evolved for Earth's specific environmental parameters: 1 G gravity, 20% O₂ atmosphere, water availability, circadian rhythm matched to 24-hour days, vitamin D from unfiltered sunlight. The experience? "I missed it without knowing I missed it. I thought I was chasing something out there. Maybe I was running from something here."
Aila nods. "The sky calls to some people. But the earth remembers all of us."
The salmon tastes like smoke and omega-3s and a planet that produces food naturally rather than through carefully controlled hydroponics. The fire smells like birch and tradition. The conversation tastes like wisdom I'd forgotten humans have been accumulating here for 300,000 years—since long before we started leaving.
Mikko drives me back to Kakslauttanen as the sun sets at 2 PM (Arctic winter has the most absurd hours). "Tomorrow," he says, "the sauna. You need to understand ice."
"I've been in ice. I've walked on glaciers, explored cryovolcanoes, swum in liquid methane—"
"Different ice," Mikko says. "Tomorrow."
The husky team bounds through snow, and I hold on, relearning a planet I thought I knew.
Night 4: The Ice Sauna (Or: Thermal Shock as Spiritual Practice)
The tradition is simple but profound: heat your body to its limits, then plunge into ice. Back on Mars, we'd call this "dangerous thermal stress." In the Arctic, they call it "Tuesday."
The private sauna—traditional Finnish design, wood-fired, no electronics—reaches 90°C. Let me paint you a picture: I'm sitting on a wooden bench (actual wood, from actual trees, a luxury Mars simply doesn't have), breathing steam infused with arctic birch branches (vihta—the traditional bundle), sweating in ways that hab climate systems never allow, feeling my core temperature climb toward dangerous levels.
The math is simple: 90°C air temperature, ~10% humidity from steam, radiative and convective heat transfer into body core. The reality? I can feel my cardiovascular system working overtime—heart rate elevated, blood vessels dilated, sweat evaporating (in this humidity it actually evaporates, unlike Mars hab moisture-controlled air), and every nerve ending screaming this is too hot.
Mikko sits beside me, completely comfortable, occasionally throwing water on the heated stones to create more steam (löyly—the spirit of the sauna, he calls it).
"Now," he says after twenty minutes, "the ice."
The ice pool awaits outside: a perfect circle cut into the frozen lake, surrounded by snow, open to air that's -35°C. I'm wearing only a swimsuit (borrowed—I don't own swimwear, what would I use it for on Mars?), and stepping from 90°C sauna into -35°C air is—
The science says rapid thermal transition causes vasoconstriction, adrenaline release, and temporary respiratory shock as the body interprets the temperature delta as a survival threat. The experience? My brain stops. Completely. Every thought vanishes. I'm pure reaction, pure sensation, standing on a wooden platform above a hole in frozen lake, and then—
I jump.
The water is 0°C (by definition—it's literally frozen everywhere except where they cut holes daily). The shock of entry stops thought itself. Not like meditation, not like mental discipline—like a hard reboot. For three seconds, I exist purely as cold and alive and this is the worst decision and this is the best decision happening simultaneously.
Then: euphoria. Endorphins flooding my system. My skin tingles with an aliveness I haven't felt since my first spacewalk. I surface, gasping (the air is so cold it feels like breathing knives), and climb out with Mikko's help.
Back in the sauna, wrapped in reindeer fur (actual animal fur, a material that doesn't exist on Mars in any practical quantity), I watch steam rise from my skin like my soul is visible. My cardiovascular system is confused. My nervous system is recalibrating. My brain is producing chemicals it didn't know it still could.
"You understand now," Mikko says.
"Understand what?"
"Why we stay. Why we don't leave. The planets are out there—yes, you've seen them. But Earth has this." He gestures to the sauna, the ice, the forest beyond. "Heat and cold and water and life and 300,000 years of humans learning how to thrive here."
The science says Earth's biodiversity, climate systems, and evolutionary history make it unique among known planets. The experience? I've spent five years running away from gravity, from thick atmosphere, from the planet that killed my grandmother while I was chasing dreams in space. And now—sitting in a wooden room heated by burning trees, having just jumped into frozen water for reasons that make no logical sense—I understand what I was running from.
Not Earth. Grief. The kind of grief that comes from leaving and never returning in time. From choosing sky over soil. From becoming the thing my grandmother told me I could become, at the cost of never seeing her again.
The sauna smells like birch and wood smoke. The ice water tasted like cold and shock and absolute clarity. The moment of realization—that I've been using interplanetary distances as grief avoidance—tastes like tears and steam and something breaking open in my chest that maybe needed to break.
Night 5: Departure (Or: Carrying Earth to Titan)
My final night brings the strongest aurora of the season. KP index 8 (severe geomagnetic storm). Solar wind speed 750 km/s. Conditions that on Mars would mean "shelter in place, all EVAs cancelled, pray your radiation shielding holds." On Earth, it means the entire sky turns into a cathedral of light.
I lie in my glass igloo—warm, safe, wrapped in real cotton blankets (not synthetic Martian textiles)—watching the universe perform just for me. The aurora is green, purple, red (rare color, requires high-altitude excitation of oxygen atoms, usually only seen in severe storms), streaming across the atmosphere in waves that pulse with the rhythm of Earth's magnetic field responding to solar bombardment.
Let me paint you a picture—and I mean this literally, because I'm recording everything in 4K spectral imaging for Amara, for my own research, for proof that I was here:
The aurora fills the sky from horizon to horizon, brighter than I've seen from orbit, more dynamic than any space-based observation. It's moving—actually visibly moving, shifting and dancing on timescales of seconds. This is electromagnetic weather—solar particles colliding with atmospheric gases, releasing photons, creating light through the same quantum mechanics that govern everything from LED bulbs to stellar fusion.
But it's also magic. The kind of magic that science explains but doesn't diminish. The kind that makes an astrophysicist cry (again—I've given up on professional dignity) while lying alone in the Arctic, thinking about a grandmother who never saw this, thinking about a planet she's been avoiding, thinking about how far you can run before you have to come home.
My phone buzzes (cellular reception—still weird). It's a message from Captain Mbeki:
"Still alive? Still planning Titan trip? Still avoiding therapy by hiding in Arctic?"
I reply: "Yes, yes, and it's not hiding if there's scientific value."
"That's what you said about Mars. And Jupiter. And that neutron star that almost killed you."
"I'm fine."
"Sure. See you at the launch facility in two weeks. Don't freeze to death before then."
The aurora intensifies. The glass igloo stays warm. I'm leaving tomorrow—helicopter at 10 AM, flight to Helsinki, transfer to Mars shuttle launch facility in Kazakhstan, then back to Mars Colony 3 for equipment prep, then Titan mission departure in six weeks.
Some places change you. The Arctic didn't change me—it reminded me. Reminded me that Earth isn't just the planet I'm from, it's the planet that built me. Every gene optimized for this gravity, this atmosphere, this temperature range. Every instinct calibrated to this world's rhythms: day and night, seasons, weather, water falling from the sky instead of being extracted from subsurface ice.
I've seen seventeen different planets. I've floated in methane lakes. I've planted flags on volcanoes that dwarf continents. I've done things my grandmother couldn't have imagined when she gave me that telescope on her Lagos roof.
But I never came back to thank her. Never stood at her grave. Never told her about Saturn's rings from underneath, about Martian dust storms, about the view of Earth from space—that fragile blue marble that holds every human who's ever lived except the few dozen of us foolish enough to leave.
My grandmother used to say, "Onye na-apụ apụ na ụlọ, ka ọ na-echeta ebe o si" (The one who leaves home must remember where they came from).
I left. I've been gone for years, decades if you count training and missions. I chased the sky because she told me I could. But I forgot to come back and tell her what I found.
The aurora tastes like regret and wonder. The warm igloo tastes like sanctuary and temporary refuge. The knowledge that tomorrow I return to space—first Mars, then Titan, then who knows where—tastes like calling and obligation and the question I've been avoiding: am I exploring because I love space, or because I'm terrified of being still?
The aurora fades around 5 AM. The sky returns to stars—Earth stars, the ones humans have been navigating by for 50,000+ years, the ones my ancestors in Lagos used before they had telescopes or spacecraft or any idea that humans would someday leave.
The helicopter comes at dawn. I pack my things (very few things—space travel teaches you to minimize mass), tip generously (Arctic hospitality runs on mutual respect and gratitude), and take one last look at the glass igloos scattered across white wilderness.
Mikko drives me to the helipad. "You'll come back," he says.
"Maybe."
"Not maybe. You will. Earth calls her children home eventually. Even the ones who run furthest."
The helicopter lifts off. The Arctic shrinks below. I'm going back to Mars, then to Titan, then to wherever the next mission takes me. But I'm carrying something now that I wasn't carrying before:
Permission. Not to chase the sky—Grandmother Adanna gave me that years ago. Permission to come back. To remember that exploration isn't running away, it's learning and returning and sharing what you've learned with the world that made you.
I'm going to Titan. I'm going to document methane lakes and Saturn's glory and cryovolcanic mysteries. I'm going to do it for science, for humanity, for the species that evolved on this blue marble and refuses to stay here.
But I'm also going to do it for Grandmother Adanna, who gave me stars and never asked me to stay. Who said "Ụwa bụ ebe ọma, mana elu igwe bụ ebe ịrụ ụka gị" (The world is good, but the sky is where your dreams live) and meant it as permission, not obligation.
And when I come back—when, not if—I'm going to visit Lagos. I'm going to stand at her grave. I'm going to tell her everything.
The aurora taught me: some lights speak to the soul. Some journeys require leaving home. And some homecomings take decades and interplanetary distances to prepare for.
(The aurora viewing, thermal glass technology, husky sled expeditions, ice sauna ritual—cost: ₦18,500,000. Confronting grief you've been avoiding for five years at the top of the world—apparently free with admission. Realizing you've been running from home instead of exploring away from it—priceless and terrifying in equal measure.)
(Captain Mbeki was right. I hate when he's right. I'm definitely not telling him that.)