Cautious optimism exhaustion
“Tomorrow night, we’re just going straight to our second location.”
Friends from life’s past returned for several aurora chases, but this time to the Yukon, where the forecast was awful and our belief in clear sky chases would be challenged.
A day before their arrival, I had a look at the weather for the few nights ahead and closed Environment Canada’s app about as fast as I had opened it. Non-sense, I thought. We’ll find pockets and outrun this mess hour by hour, night by night. I was mostly annoyed, but partially inspired. Cloud maps presented a less dire view of the nights ahead, however cautious optimism exhaustion is a very real state.
Our first two nights ended with us in different locations from where we began. They were differences of just a few kilometres, but provided dramatically improved views leaving behind heavier cloud cover. On the way home from our second straight successful chase, I joked “Tomorrow night, we’re just going straight to our second location”.
However, that move to a second location on our final night was less necessary than our first two (announcer’s curse, of course), although we did end up on a light chase further down the highway at a scenic pullout in a last ditch effort to, ultimately unsuccessfully, out wait very, very quiet aurora conditions.
