Spring in the north

I remember even from my apartment seeing the sky in the west and having that feeling inside that this was going to be one of those sunsets that I wouldn’t be able to handle missing. Tonight it was a haziness in the light reaching over all the clouds and there was only one decision.

Much further from town, in the gravel of the shoulder, I sat up on my centre console poking my head out of the moonroof with my camera. As minutes and photos elapsed, I could put my camera down with total contentment and just rest my head on my heads still out of the moonroof, and simply observe the elk.

I was totally relaxed in my car in the company of the elk. But I could feel an internal nagging to find somewhere more open. The light was turning more and more orange, and for as fast as the clouds were moving, the sky only seemed to be getting more and more spectacular.

I at last left the elk and begun down another gravel road, stopping well before the end of the road at the lake. I just couldn’t handle how beautiful this sunset was.

“I had learned by now just to keep my parka, mittens, and a beanie inside the car.”

These days were reaching temperatures not shy of 15°C, which may as well have been Mexico in December to me, but the evenings fell quickly back to freezing. I had learned by now just to keep my parka, mittens, and a beanie inside the car. It only took one evening of running out of the house after a sunset without gloves to create a failsafe against that from ever happening again.

And in typical Kusawa Lake ways, the wind whistled brutally down the fjord.

There I was in the middle of May, under a 10:30pm sunset, with mittens and a fur trimmed parka hood pulled over my head. Spring in the north.

Ice obsessions

Then a couple nights later, I was back to Kusawa Lake ready to fall in love with the lake ice one more time before the summer.

The shore was an endless journey of slow paced exploration and overwhelming beauty. I mean the true, overwhelming in your body kind of beauty. The increased heart rate, beauty sigh, physical touch, deeper breathing but almost short of breath kind of overwhelming.

At one small curve along the lake where the ice came back closer to the shore, I could feel the air temperature drop by several degrees in an instant. It was unmistakably tangible in an environment completely devoid of disturbances.