Somewhere between evolution and maturity

I’m taking more time to notice more, to see beauty more, and to enjoy it.

I have always chased the photography in the aurora. It is I think ultimately an endless chase, which is so much of the everlasting interest and love, curiosity. This is a special thing if you can truly have satisfaction in the journey, in the every day. But if you are there to chase it to an end, to find satisfaction only in reaching the end, then I think you never find it.

The aurora never is the same. It never stays the same.

Photographing the aurora has helped me to continually discover so much of just how beautiful it truly is. There are colours and perspectives which, for me, are appreciated most through photography, or I see only through photography. I love this.

But as I’ve ‘chased the photography’ less, I have appreciated the aurora so much more. It feels like an escape, and a rebirth, instead of a ticking clock to an unachievable, superficial satisfaction.

”I like to watch it more.”

There was another guide in Yellowknife who I admired so much. He is an amazing photographer, but with the aurora, he just loved to watch it. It is so special for him, and I always admired that while never understanding it. All these years, I couldn’t make sense of not wanting to photograph every moment, but coming to that place myself, despite not really knowing how or why, or exactly when, I admire it even more.

I still love to photograph the aurora. I will forever. It’s just not in the same way of prioritizing it to the ends of the earth, and it has opened up so much more magic and beauty in the whole of the experience. Standing against the nose of my car, or reclining my seat with the moonroof open, these feel now like the slow motion, eternally grateful moments they should be, rather than worrying about if I’ve taken the perfect picture of the aurora dancing over my head.

As I was driving to a different spot along the Ingraham Trail a few hours into the night, I saw an e-mail come from a guest who stayed with me here long enough ago that I still had my guesthouse. She included a photo she had just taken from her balcony in Vancouver of the aurora over the mountains.

For the first time since leaving Vancouver for Yellowknife, for the aurora, I was right where I wanted to be for so many years, while Vancouver was experiencing what I loved most and chased even there. It was an unbelievably surreal moment, and it placed a smile on my face.