I was driving home from Vancouver to Kamloops one night through the coastal range to BC's interior on Highway 5 somewhere between the Coquihalla summit and Merr

I was driving home from Vancouver to Kamloops one night through the coastal range to BC's interior on Highway 5 somewhere between the Coquihalla summit and Merritt - I don't recall exactly where on the road I was, possibly close to Kingsvale (Approx. 50°N). It was pitch dark when it began, no city lights and so many stars, so bright, they were endless. That stretch of highway is spectacular on a clear night. I'd recommend it to anyone. I used to drive that stretch once every couple of weeks for about a year after I moved to Canada at the end of 1999, so it would've been that winter season. I used to take the mid-afternoon Friday flight from Heathrow so I would've landed in Vancouver at around 5:30pm and by the time I got my car out of long term parking and got to that point it would have been around 9pm or so. The Aurora was so close and so vivid and bright it seemed as if it was intruding into the car, close enough to touch if you could touch it, but it's like trying to touch a rainbow, you just can't. It screws with your brain. I pulled over on the side of the highway and got out. They were vivid hues of green, pink and yellow and they were bright enough in the dark that even without the lights of my car, I could see clear detail of the landscape, brighter than if lit by a full moon, but not quite like daylight. The entire sky lit up as far as you could see with pillars of light that ebbed and waned like a symphony of light and colour. There was nothing faint or subtle about it. I could see the hairs on the back of my hand it was so bright. Even my description fails to capture its beauty. The oddest thing about having experienced that was it was so blurry, it screwed with my eyes and my brain. Not being able to focus on it was like driving in thick fog. Despite it being a magical and mesmerizing experience, I felt some discomfort. I couldn't look at it for longer than a few seconds at a time before I had to look back to the road and hillside so my eyes could focus on something.