Tales of the beautiful everyday from the North
Snow drifts, blurry trees, and fallen tripods
The annual Iceland on Highway 3 night
After almost 90 kilometres from town, we arrived to a secluded driveway, that, by all indications earlier in the night, was our best chance.
And it was dead cloudy. All 90 kilometres - not one star. Just snow drifts creeping out from the highway edges toward the centre line and constant blowing snow. It very much was my beloved annual Icelandic weather night.
Without much hesitation, we hunkered down in the car, occasionally throwing our heads out the window up at the sky to check for stars. Then after about an hour had passed, stars began to appear. Just a few at first, and sparking very cautious optimism, but it wasn’t long before more and more of the sky opened up.
The aurora was gentle, although it became clear quite quickly we were seeing things move in the right direction, and then it was just magic.
Tripods continued to be toppled and the aurora continued to dance. The wind, gusting 64km/h, blurred trees in the foregrounds of our photos and actively hurt my forehead with it’s cold - even through my thickest wool toque. It was brutal, but inside I did just love it so much, and I enjoyed the beauty of every last vein of blowing snow across highway for all 90 kilometres back home.
The nights that pass too fast
The aurora was quiet, still gentle, when we arrived out onto our frozen lake for the night, but that quiet wouldn’t be for long.
Clouds were threatening from the west, but this was still far from an immediate concern.
Inside, I was already the happiest. Frozen lakes, ice roads, and the aurora. Everything I so feared losing forever back in April 2022, I had again, and the comfort and homeyness of the ice singing below us all night was something I’m not sure anyone else could ever understand.
I felt reconnected with a love that I discovered and felt grow with every year in Yellowknife. But it was more than just the ice, it was the shorelines, the tree lines, and as close as we have to mountainscapes here, and then the virtual ease with which the aurora just danced above all of that. It’s really the magic of Yellowknife, and this night felt like full circle from that one night in particular back in April of 2022 just before I moved away that produced so much heartbreak.
Returning after 10 years
It was a breathtaking night, really truly breathtaking.
We waited many hours through quiet conditions and cold, but not extremely uncomfortable, temperatures. We were just barely into the -30s, which we’ve been for weeks now, and I’m well adjusted after my yearly fall anxiety about winter winter.
It’s so difficult sometimes to write about nights like this.
There’s a gentle contentment but overwhelming perfection here. It’s in the company of my guests who returned after their first visit 10 years earlier, a quiet location away from everyone else, so much patience and then this beautiful show all around us of colour and movement that you cannot imagine until you are under it.
Repeatedly testing our luck
“…there’s rarely a better feeling than being at the right place at the right time.”
Through the middle of December, we had nights and nights of close calls with cloud banks. Sometimes arriving into clearing skies at just the right moment to meet a waiting aurora. Other nights, we hung on to clear sky as long as we could, hoping the aurora would join us before we were eaten up by cloud.
This really is all at the heart of aurora chasing for me, and there’s rarely a better feeling than being at the right place at the right time.
Facing winter head on
Coming out of a fresh 30cm snowfall several days ago, temperatures were running straight for the deep -30s for as long as Environment Canada would show.
The morning after our snowfall, I woke up to see the trees swaying dramatically outside my bedroom window. I thought about tour that night and immediately wanted to pull my duvet over my head and go right back to sleep.
When I came downstairs and saw snow drifts across my patio and snow pushed up against my door frame, I could hear in my mind the squeaks and stiffness of my poor little car already having not moved for days and it made me wince.
All is love and pain in these winter days
After more than 10 years living in the north, I have my eyes wide open to life here. I know the struggles of daily life in the north through the winter, but it doesn’t get any easier. It just becomes more familiar. I still hate the squeaks of rubber bushings not flexing like they do in normal environments. I hate my momentary lapses of judgment leading to incredible pain touching metal that’s been outside for an hour at -37. There are a lot of hard moments, but they are also what makes life here so special.
The wind settled, somewhat, by the time we settled in the countryside under this clear sky. The aurora started very gently, but was soon enough vibrant to our eyes even in the face of a full winter moon.
