The in-flight movie had ended and the passengers were dozing away to catch some rest before the landing some hours ahead.

I pulled up the screen covering the oval window by my seat. I expected black darkness outside. Instead an awesome sight unfolded before me. Below were the massive white plains of Greenland. The pristine, frozen land and ocean shone dazzlingly white in the night. Cracks in the ice formed black trails ending nowhere. The land lay empty, silent, untouched.

Yet above, just outside my window, the sky burst in a brilliant dance of colors. Auroras soared all around us, like vibrant ghosts thrown at earth by the sun. A particular green wall of the sun-wind towered just before the plane. I held my breath as we seemingly flew right into it. I expected all the flight instruments to crackle and surely give up on us. Instead, we just went through quietly.

I was fascinated. "Wake up, wake up!" I urged the fellow passengers in the seats around us. "Look, look Northern Lights - they are everywhere!"

-"Oh, go to sleep!" came the response in a distinct Russian accent. The passengers were on their way back home to Moscow, tired and obviously not easily impressed.

I sat back silently, not taking my eyes of the magnificent drama outside.

In a few hours, the sun itself started to rise and Iceland emerged from the ocean, illuminated by the morning rays. Again, there was that icy wilderness of endless, white solitude. Except now the light tinted it in warm pinks. Scattered volcanoes glowed softly lit by the rising sun like red snowball lanterns.

I imagined what it would be like to step down there and start walking endlessly, all alone in such a majestic place. What would it be like - and what would I be like in it? What would I think, what would be important? 
Another thought entered my mind. If this is what Iceland and Greenland are like - how marvelous must then not the Arctic's be?

I turned to Thomas, eagerly shaking him awake:

"Honey, let´s go to the poles!"