The nights you dream of

One of the things that makes me so comfortable chasing the aurora in Whitehorse, and one of the things I looked forward to the most when I was on my way here, was the dynamic weather, extensive highway infrastructure, and mountain scenery, and how all of that felt so much to me like the very first days of when I began chasing the aurora in northern Norway around 2007 and 2008.

“It was our first night out there, and best night, so I just had to close that door and start all over again.”

As just a guide at first, but quickly a friend, and forever a mentor, Kjetil recounted his first time chasing and photographing the aurora on the 29th of October, 2003, to a BBC film crew a few years later. “The snow was actually coloured red”, he said. “It was our first night out there, and best night, so I just had to close that door and start all over again.”

For one of my guests on this night, it was her first time seeing the aurora. And the night started gently, but it wasn’t long before we were front and centre in a spectacular onset of a geomagnetic storm that would buffet the earth for several more days. The reds were the most spectacular I have ever seen, and it reminded me so much of Kjetil’s story from his experience more than 20 years earlier.