Abandoned tea

The abandoned cup of tea

I always have felt that the winter days in Yellowknife are too long (really). At 62.4°N, the sun still rises for 5 hours during winter solstice and it makes me miss the polar nights of Scandinavia so much. I love the 24 hours of darkness, and it’s okay if I’m the only one.

And then on January 19th, I would have loved it even more.

In the middle of our day, an intense solar storm had begun to buffet the earth and as soon as it was dark, the sky filled with the most gorgeous pinks and reds.

After an early dinner, I had just come to my sofa with a cup of tea from the kitchen to finish the episode of Clarkson’s Farm I had started. I picked up my phone, refreshed the aurora conditions, and panicked. I immediately talked with my guests and moved our already early beginning of tour to a what’s the soonest we can be ready tour start time. We wasted not a moment - they walked out of the elevator as I walked into the hotel lobby, and we were off travelling across a few lakes to what is probably my favourite, favourite winter place in Yellowknife, and we stayed until the clouds ate us up a couple hours later.

I returned home before midnight, with such a full heart, to my untouched cup of tea sitting right where I left it on my coffee table.

The abandoned pot of tea

A night later and I had it off. I had no guests booked, so it was a quiet, cosy night for me, with plenty of time to finish that episode of Clarkson’s Farm.

I was still keeping an eye on the aurora conditions through dinner, and unchanged since years, I was fully vulnerable to a sort of aurora anxiety. I live under it, but it still breaks my heart to miss it. It’s the middle of winter - I am frozen and exhausted, but I am still in love with the aurora.

I checked my phone several times over the next 10 minutes, watching what was happening in the sky above Yellowknife, wondering if I should get changed out of my pyjamas, blow out all my candles, and abandon a 1.5L pot of tea that wasn’t even done steeping on the kitchen counter for a very deliberate drive into the countryside, knowing we were right on the cusp of a spectacular break up that was probably just some moments to minutes away.

After twice trying to put my phone away and just settle into my sofa, I grabbed my car keys, remote started the Sienna, and ran upstairs to get changed. I ran back downstairs and out the door, wondering what I was forgetting, aside from the tea strainer still sitting in the teapot on the counter.

I had made it out in perfect time, doing exactly the speed limit the entire way. The next couple hours were breathtaking, including some reds to my eyes. And just as perfect was being back home by 9pm to finally finish that episode of Clarkson’s Farm, the entire pot of tea, and even carve out a little time for yoga before bed at an almost normal hour.

A little more Icelandic weather induced chaos

The beginning of the night was all a little bit of a panic. A passing cloud bank was just leaving us, and the aurora was already teasing us. We found somewhere to pull over quickly, and by 10pm, we were already under what would be the most beautiful aurora of the night.

When we had moved further into the countryside later in the night and out onto a frozen lake, no time was wasted getting reacquainted with the Icelandic winds still present from the night earlier. The ice roads were a mess. Snow drifts reached far and wide, and my already low to the ground Toyota Sienna did, by design, a little bit of light snow plowing to further us from shore.

The wind once again went right through my toque, numbing my forehead, and I tried not to face the wind head on for too long. We often took cover in the car, but it was hard to resist the dead quiet of the frozen lake with just the soft idling of the car muffled by the wind howling around my hood.

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.