The journey north begins with a single pothole

526 kilometres to Dawson City, and probably, honestly, at least 526 potholes. I have made 2,500km drives down to Vancouver that felt shorter. This wasn’t my favourite drive, but the highway views of endless rolling mountains and frosted forests were beautiful and cleansing of the near constant pothole swerving, and frost-heaves-out-of-nowhere anxieties.

A couple weeks ago, we spent a few days up in Dawson, wandering the wooden sidewalks, gorgeous forest trails, and breathtaking vistas from up above the city. It was a quiet little retreat filled with curiosity and the cosiest evenings of dinners in atmospheric little hole in the wall restaurants, and card games, snacks and tea back at our hotel on snowy nights.

“Immer hinter der Kamera laufen”

Immer hinter der Kamera laufen. Immer hinter der Kamera laufen. Immer hinter der Kamera laufen.

“Always walk behind the camera” was our mantra for the night. We huddled near to the car as we always do, and every time one of us picked up our tripod to chase the aurora around the sky… “Immer hinter der Kamera laufen!”

“Everybody knows, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. What few people realise, it is only through the parts that the whole gets delivered.”

An obvious benefit to solar maximum are nights like this one, of course. All the most amazing colours, visible to the eye and everything, along with the most beautiful dancing structures.

The weather moved fast, as it often does here, but we settled in to a great little spot under mostly clear sky. The fresh snow on the mountains was magical. It felt like a really, really special night - the kind that became engraved in my memory. It’s so easy to be in love with this lifestyle on these nights, and now more than ever, they aren’t ever taken for granted.

Time brings all things to pass

On the first of back to back nights, clear skies abounded. Really, truly clear skies - not just Whitehorse clear. I make fun of our weather a little bit. Clear usually translates something closer to a few clouds, and overcast lands closer to cloudy periods. The other 99% of the time is partly cloudy. None of this is bad, for you. For me, it creates a little more stress than what I feel is ideal.

So this first night, clear skies were everywhere early, which meant cherry picking a favourite place under wonderful aurora conditions. If we stayed long enough, we may meet some slow travelling cloud up from the south, but it wasn’t likely, and in the end waiting that long wasn’t necessary. The aurora danced early and often.

Our second night presented an ever so slightly less optimistic scenario. The weather was pretty bad, the aurora conditions much worse, and an early morning flight departure meant we didn’t have all night.

We left Whitehorse in the rain, but with a clear direction out of town for clearing skies working their way toward us. On the drive out, I saw a dramatic change in the aurora data which perked my ears up and landed a sheepish smile on my face. There is sometimes that little bit of magic in life and in timing.

Our night worked out in the most magical way, and my love for that was never more, standing in such a different place just hours earlier.

Messy nights and pointed drives

The perfect nights are leaving town with all but assured stable, clear skies and very favourable aurora conditions that present a ‘when’, and not ‘if’ question. But those nights are not every night.

Sometimes our drives are long and meandering, sometimes they are very pointed, and sometimes our nights involve shooting from less than ideal locations for very short periods while we stay more on the run to keep up with changing weather. These sorts of nights are our reality too. They don’t make the perfect blog posts, they are not what you see promoted, but they’re real, and there is a real beauty in them too.

When we can genuinely set aside what any of social media has impressioned us with, these quieter, messy nights are there to be loved and appreciated. Before smart phones and social media, these nights meant the world to us and we’d have given everything just for them too.

It never leaves you

“I think sometimes you don’t know what a place is to you until you have to leave it.”

A completely new to me part of the Yukon, and truly I could not believe what we stumbled into. It was like some sort of mystical fairyland cross of Iceland’s Thingvellir National Park, West Fjords and Norway’s coast, but all less than 200km from my door.

This sense of overwhelming, full body, cute rage kind of exhilaration, amazement and disbelief isn’t something I have felt maybe ever. I think sometimes you don’t know what a place is to you until you have to leave it, and then you long for it every day since you’ve left.

As often as I joke about on road trips pulling over every 100m for the changing scenery, this was our reality here. Paralyzed by a complete inability to progress beyond where we were without first combing over every moss and berry covered rock, admiring the little lakes and streams that have formed in every crevice. Peeking over one ridge led to the next and the next and before I knew it, I was far from the car. I lived in a place between wanting to stay forever, but explore further. These days passed much too quickly, but of course we will be back soon again.