definitely unexpected

Dress… a jacket short of a suit, a small black shoulder bag filled lightly with a camera & two lenses. A small red roller bag with my tent, toothpaste, change of clothes, and sleeping sheet, and a Gitzo carbon fiber tripod dangling from my free hand. I stepped out of the cockpit of our Dornier aircraft in a small town up North I’m becoming increasingly good friends with, Fort Nelson, BC and was recognised immediately by our girls who clearly hadn’t forgotten what I look like since my last visit a few months prior. While it was starting to get late after an extended dinner & drinks at Boston Pizza with Shelby and four of her girlfriends, I still had a few hours to pass before the skies would dance overhead in greens and purples.

I had set out to camp at the school. In dress shoes, nicely fitted skinny dress pants, a shirt & skinny tie. Shelby would be back to pick me up at 07:30 and take us both to the airport – her work day, my flight back home. As brilliant as it sounded to camp out in the middle of a field surrounded by forest, I couldn’t ignore the calling of a safe, wildlife free hotel room. No bears. No mosquitos. No strange noises. A one bedroom suite. A jacuzzi in the living room. A kitchen. A king bed.

Walking the outskirts of town in skinny jeans & a now, slightly sweaty t-shirt, I glance to the corner of my right eye to a window rolling down from the biggest truck I’ve seen all night. “Sean?! …Is that you? …I have a hot chocolate for you! I was going to drop by the school and see if you wanted some company.” It was Christine, who I was introduced to in the middle of four other names at dinner all in about 6.4 seconds. I, of course, didn’t know that until I asked her three hours later, and we’d driven 20 minutes outside town down a logging road up to an incredible lookout over the entire Northern Rockies.

It was a funny thing. The northern lights weren’t half as active as forecast, but none of that seemed to really matter very much. They were there. And we watched in deep appreciation as they fade in and out leaning back on the front of her dad’s truck out atop this mountain in the middle of no where. Hours passed. We told our life stories to one another. We enjoyed it for everything it was worth.