A meditative state
Sitting out on the counter from a late, late bake the night before were some 5-minutes-too-long-in-the-oven scones.
In the morning now, snow just fell and fell and fell from low, overcast cloud. It seemed like every time I looked out the windows, the clouds had gotten lower until none of the mountains were visible at all.
It really was just the cosiest homebody kind of day, where the 11am sunrise blurs into the late afternoon sunset, and my cosy window lights never lose their glow against the sky outside, and we were supposed to be going to the mountains.
We easily agreed to delay 24 hours, leaving plenty of time for a new batch of scones to be over-baked, however I didn’t. Sugar was still nowhere to be found, and these couldn’t be completely inedible, I was mostly pretty sure.
Aside from having to dodge a snowplow a few times, waiting a day was just the best decision. Hot coffee and heartfelt conversation filled the car as we travelled deeper into nature. Fast moving clouds, mountains of snow, and cold, but not frigid, winter air on my face brought back so much Norwegian nostalgia. Time passed far too quickly, and soon we were stumbling down a snowy hillside in the dark.
Sometime while I was sleeping in the late evening after our heavenly afternoon and getting warm drinks ready just before 11pm, the skies had mostly cleared.
Instinctively upon waking up, I look skeptically to the sky in search of cloud banks, double checking weather maps, looking for where the other shoe is going to drop from. I think that’s the years and years of chasing clear sky, obsessing over the weather night after night, for 9 months of the year. But that other shoe wouldn’t come tonight, we were in the clear all evening, but as ever, that’s just half our story.
“Good, but calm. And it would be nice if things were a little bit more unsettled.”
With the weather as close as we come to worry free in Whitehorse, it was onto the aurora conditions which were good, but calm. Full moons in the middle of winter always give some challenges, as beautiful as they are.
We waited as long as we could tonight in the company of the occasionally heard singing ice of the lake. Careful steps out onto the shore cracked the ice under my feet. It was equal parts alarming as calming. There is something so special about the ice. An early morning flight departure eventually brought us back into town. Despite squeezing every last minute out of our clear skies tonight, the aurora remained quiet. Gentle, but beautiful low across the horizon.
