The annual Leafs vs. Canucks bestie weekend

It was the full face smile, laugh out loud reaction to spotting each other in arrivals at the airport. It was once again just like falling right back into old times, and there is nothing is better than that.

My Ontarian bestie was back, and for the first time in Whitehorse.

In our annual tradition of shared suffering, we carved out a few hours over dinner to watch the Canucks beat the Leafs.

Of course it’s all good fun, and the pain doesn’t really start until the Leafs exit in the first round again, and the Canucks fall in the draft lottery. As per tradition.

Winter walks through this beautiful little neighbourhood, the forest trails, and out to the cliffs were accompanied by thermoses of perfected glühwein.

Other days saw long drives through the mountains with warm drinks and delicious snacks, and endless nature bathing while the wind howled and the warmth of the sun continued to return, even in the -20s.

Like every visit, this was the just-so-good-for-the-soul, laughter induced cheek and stomach pain, emotionally raw weekend that makes life so special.

Paralyzing beauty

When I emailed my guests, I told them that I would like to go much earlier tonight. But I said it is taking a little bit of a risk because if we are wrong, it could be a longer night out there.

“We love an adventure so earlier is fine with us.”

So a couple hours earlier than I would normally be greeting my guests, I laughed out loud as they walked down their driveway just off the Alaska Highway. Above us, a green curtain danced.
”Yeah, a risk”, we all laughed.

Then after some minutes just admiring the perfection above, we finally jumped into the car and made our way out of town.

What a night.

“When we heard you swear, we figured this probably wasn’t normal.”

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Livets ånde

The cure I know to help against grumpy days and everything just not working is long drives and the ice.

Ice froze all over the windows on a morning of -27°, and then I met the best of that in the middle of nowhere, on the centre of a lake in total silence except the deep sounds of the ice itself.

The beauty and the comfort of the ice is beyond any kind of comprehension I have. I stayed for hours walking from uncovered patch to uncovered patch in an endless and aimless wandering. The wind created such beautiful and fragile textures in the snow and the ice sang almost endlessly. It didn’t matter to me when the batteries died, I just wanted to stay out there for ever.

The bittersweet of longer days

To lose this kind of all day light hurts a little bit. It’s one of my favourite things about winter, one of the things I love the most and one of the things I strongly crave through the rest of the year.

But loss in one place leaves room for growth in another.

These already longer days move the sun further north and higher in the sky, once again reaching over the mountains and into my bedroom at sunrise. Standing at my windows and feeling the warmth and brightness of the direct sun on my face is almost cathartic.

And now, I start to dream about patio furniture, coffee outside, and growing greens on my balcony. That is not so far away, but of course, it is definitely not for the middle of February.

Guilty footsteps and repeating tire tracks

I had finally returned to Kusawa Lake for the first time since freeze up, and I was the first footprints out onto this pristine snow covered ice. A light guilt passed over me, not wanting to spoil any photos or such an undisturbed view with my footprints, as distinctively humble as the mukluk prints are. The step from the shore onto the lake was obvious to a good ear. The sound of the ice underneath my boot changed dramatically.

“It was the perfect, untouched winter landscape I would dream forever of.”

For the next couple of weeks, it seemed like I couldn’t make a decision that didn’t involve Kusawa Lake. Pristine, windswept snow was everywhere. It was the perfect, untouched winter landscape I would dream forever of.

It was the right place, on the right day, at the right time, so many times.

The true silence out here made time feel like it had stopped moving, and then I’d look at the clouds just a few hundred metres above fly by so quickly while the sunlight climbed the hills so slowly. The water still flowed effortlessly down the river while on the surface so much was completely frozen.

“There is no beauty like that of nature during the depth of winter. It is a world of extremes.”

On a night that demanded a lot of kilometres, and more trust in weather maps and weather patterns than I had experience of, we once again settled back around Kusawa Lake. The wind was fierce, but strangely comfortable at just -2°. Snow blew up in clouds across the highway and trees swayed violently in the forest. Pullout after pullout - cloud.

Still we had to wait for the clear skies to become reachable for us, but once they did, we were there and the stars and a few faint arcs of aurora in such a dramatic environment were worth all the trouble a thousandfold.