So, how do we come home after just a single night away, and begin to try and describe this experience to our friends, family… blog stalkers? There really aren’t any combination of words, no matter how eloquently put together, that can bring you this experience. I can talk for hours about the way the aurora dances a tango across the entire sky, entire sky, or about how it will just pulsate itself into existence out of nowhere, but it isn’t anything you can imagine, or take my word for. Absolutely, these photographs are gorgeous and they may give a slight sense of what I’m all about when I light up entirely as I talk about my experiences under the northern lights, but, what it’s really about for me, are those moments… Those moments of wrapping my arms around Jen while we stare straight up, and just about feel as though the aurora is dancing just for us.

And while a weekday break to Fort Nelson doesn’t quite have the same natural romantic ring as a weekend break to Venice, Italy does – it did for us, and it was more. It was romantic in a way that was perfect to us, and standing in a mix of mud, snow & slush for four hours certainly won’t do it for some, but it did for us.

Here’s a little something I put together that gives you a slight sense of our evening when the lights didn’t immediately dance right across the sky and out of my frame ;) Enjoy.

northern lights – 6 april 2010 from sean norman on Vimeo.

“He stalks the aurora. Like actually. He’s not just obsessed, he stalks it…” That’s how Jen cut off my words while talking to the waitress at Boston Pizza once we’d got into town. I guess checking the aurora activity several times every single day for months sort of… quantifies that doesn’t it.

So when Jen called me on her break as usual late Monday evening, and the first thing I said (yelled) when I picked up the phone to her was “WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF YOU DROPPING EVERYTHING AND FLYING UP TO FORT NELSON WITH ME TOMORROW FOR A NIGHT?!”, she should’ve known exactly what was up. …I was stalking the aurora, and watching a geomagnetic field storm from my computer monitor which was not acceptable. I was going North to see the lights, and she was coming with me.

Something to the tune of not being packed, missing work, missing class, not having a flight, not having accommodation, and not sure how this was going to come together gave us a sort of exhilaration we couldn’t quite put to words. We knew what it was all about though, we knew even before we left we love to travel together and love to be spontaneous together. We love just being. It doesn’t matter if we’re sitting in Waves Coffee – her working away on school papers, me on the editing of something, or if we’re hundreds of kilometres away standing alone at the edge of a forest in the middle of the Canadian North under those majestic northern lights. And, to see her face absolutely light up when I pointed North at a very faint green band over the city lights as we were walking down the Alaska highway… it gave me the utmost joy & appreciation for another little moment win. So we ran down the highway, up a muddy hill to the edge of the forest and spent the next four hours just being.

Do come back and join us for the second half of our evening in a few days! We’d love to have you along. More coming!

I’m just extremely thankful Kjetil didn’t point out the fox holes I stumbled over numerous times sooner than he did or there would’ve been no way I’d have fought my way through the two feet of snow all over to obtain some of these foregrounds. So thanksverymuch indeed!