A midnight hike
There’s nothing that says spring in the north like midnight hikes and trails turned streams.
Passing a couple two thirds to the top, I jokingly asked if it gets better, and they replied “worse”, laughing. Perfect, I said. Except for a while, it did get better, until that last few hundred metres where there was nowhere to go but over the top of 60cm of rotting snow. Tread lightly and you’re okay, but as soon as one foot goes through the surface, that’s where misery lies.
186cm & 68kg walking like Tinkerbell and I still faltered. Into the hopelessness of trying to bring one leg out of snow without putting my next leg right back through it I went.
But then finally getting out of that path, and really above the treeline, that’s where the magic was for me. Walking alongside, and in, the stream on the way up was beautiful too, but exploring the tundra in such ethereal light with so much curiosity, that can never be matched.
The colours and the life in the tundra flowers, reindeer lichen, grasses and mosses were so extraordinarily beautiful, I would have spent the entire night just combing slowly over every centimetre of that. But as more ridges appeared in the distance, I had to get to them too. I couldn’t stop. I was hopeless in my addiction of this chase of beauty.
Walking the ridges above the treeline felt like a world of contradictions. I was warm under my jacket but conscious of keeping my toque down over my ears and hiding my bare hands in the sleeves of my jacket as my nose ran. The last rays of sunlight still felt warm on my face but the air temperature was far away from that.
Occasionally I would glance at the time, but I knew it ultimately didn’t really matter. It felt like it should, but it didn’t. I feel more awake at 11pm than I do 9 hours earlier these days. The sunset was a little while before 11 o’clock, but twilight would linger through until sunrise somewhere after 5:00.
Still, I hurried from one ridge to the next, not worried about darkness and the hike back down, but just losing the pink sunlight touching the peaks. I was fully engaged in a hurry up and wait. I wanted to see it all and I wanted to do nothing but sit in every moment up there. I didn’t want to miss one ray of light shooting out from a mountain or the footstep of any of a couple little dinosaur birds grouse who were perfectly matched to the changing landscape.
I could have walked these ridges and watched how the light changed around them all the way through sunrise, but I did have a stream to navigate back down to the car.
