Photographers Nitti and Mabry at dawn on snowy Roan Mountain

And, there’s extra!

Readers of my images article final week will keep in mind the Southern Appalachian Aurora of 2025, superbly paired with Philene Alvarado’s poetry. Most had forgotten that snow showers had blanketed the best elevations the day earlier than, leaving one in all Badger’s favourite elevated playgrounds coated in recent white.

Whenever snow falls on Roan Mountain, I can depend on adventurer, photographer, and entrepreneur Joseph Nitti to achieve out. Joe inevitably proposes a hike that begins in freezing darkness lengthy earlier than dawn.

What made this morning extraordinary was that the identical geomagnetic storm was nonetheless flickering throughout the Tennessee sky. My unplanned all-nighter morphed right into a 3 a.m. alarm, a bleary-eyed drive up I-26, and a rendezvous within the city of Roan Mountain, the place Joe picked me up and drove us to Carver’s Gap.

En route to fulfill Joe, I pulled off on the scenic overlook close to the Tennessee Welcome Center on the slim probability the sky nonetheless held shade. My Aurora Alerts app confirmed promise, and the gamble paid off gloriously: above the Cherokee National Forest, the Northern Lights pulsed and danced in waves of crimson, inexperienced, and purple.

Even within the halcyon days of my youth, that form of sleep deprivation and nocturnal haul would have wrecked me. Fortunately, Badger turns into an authorized “adrenagenarian” when the second calls for it — particularly when Joe Nitti comes calling with one other expedition.

We pushed by snowdrifts as much as a foot and a half deep alongside the Appalachian Trail, climbed previous Round Bald, paused usually for images, and nonetheless met the dawn with time to spare.

As the solar crested Grassy Ridge, gilding the recent snow whereas faint aurora ribbons lingered within the sky, I stood beside Joe – coronary heart pounding, feeling completely alive. Some fires don’t fade with age; they simply look ahead to the precise spark. For this adrenagenarian, Joe Nitti continues to be the surest strike of the match. The mountain shall be there tomorrow, and so, in opposition to any odds, so will we.

Author’s Note: Joseph Nitti is the Admin of the Facebook Group The Real Banner Elk and his Gallery (along with a variety or two from Badger) will be discovered within the Mountain Hugger Emporium situated within the crimson caboose on Main Street in Banner Elk, North Carolina.

Photograph © 2025 Thomas Mabry @honeybadgerimages – All Rights Reserved

Many of the HoneyBadgerPictures are on show at instagram.com/honeybadgerimages.

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