The blog
A quick check in on spring melt
A year ago, I couldn’t understand how beautiful the end of April and beginning of May was here. I was in it but I couldn’t make sense of it.
I struggled every night choosing between playoff hockey double headers or long countryside sunset drives and drone flights. The sunset chases and changes in the ice drove me night after night into the latest hours of the night with a chest so full of love it constantly felt like it was going to explode. But it was not always like this.
“I always hated May so much.”
There was a time not long ago when almost the day after my last April aurora chase in Yellowknife, I would be fulfilling an itch to leave the territory as fast as I possibly could to go south until summer was in full swing and there wasn’t a trace of the dusty, uncomfortably bright and underwhelmingly dead countryside of May.
But May in Whitehorse cannot go slow enough. I wish the nights would last forever, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here. This weekend was the perfect opportunity to check in on the progress of spring, and all of what I fell so in love with a year ago is right on schedule. I never love losing the aurora for the summer, but as she begins to inevitably fade into later and later and everlasting sunsets and sunrises for the next few months, I am so ready for these magical evenings that are just ahead.
The April of old
The warmth of the days - 15° and sunny - drops away quickly during our late evening walks. I continue on pretending to myself that I’m going to be fine without gloves and a toque - all lies. Doris knows it and offers to cut our route back home short. One day I’ll learn.
When we got back home and warmed up more tea, we decided on going right back out the door almost as soon as we settled in. The weather was too beautiful, the aurora conditions too good, and the bright nights of summer too close.
The end of April and beginning of May is always the hard crash after a long winter. I look forward so much to the long, bright nights of summer, the magic hours of kayaking on lakes, drives to see wildlife and chase sunsets, but I’m not ready yet. I do relish these magical April nights of old - breathtaking auroral activity and magical twilight skies, and soon enough I’ll be ready for the bright nights of summer too.
A truce with the moon
A very faint first hours of tonight didn’t have me worried in the way it usually would. Not even the full moon gave me cause for concern or any real annoyance. If we would get what I was hopeful we would get, the moon would add beauty and not take any away.
So from the beginning, the longer we went without much happening above us, the more optimistic I became for some time later, and later, and later. The timing of the aurora set us up for a later peak, probably, despite very, very good conditions. It’s all always an educated guess at best, but I was fairly sure. Our 10pm sunsets and 5am sunrises now give shorter nights, but I was still sure tonight was a question of when, and not if.
That when finally came on the sunrise side of the middle of the night, of course, but it was beyond the magic I was hopeful of.
Weeks of strong contrasts
The warmth of the spring sun cannot be mistaken now, but still the cold wind cannot be either. A time of contrasts continue on - long, long days with the most magnificent sunshine and car washing temperatures while brief dark and cool nights fill with the aurora still.
Swan Haven, my favourite Yukon discovery last spring, is home once again to some 1,000+ tundra and trumpeter swans. Their numbers are on the decline now as they move on for the further north. The shore ice is decreasing every day out there, and everywhere else.
Some kilometres further south, moose nibble buds off branches and play in open fields buried under 40cm of snow. On mountain sides everywhere, the south facing slopes are void of any snow or signs of winter while the north facing sides still look like they are stuck in February.
Down in Carcross, it was the final few days of quiet before the cruise ships begin their returns to Skagway at the end of April.
And back at home, I have my first light sunburn of the year and increasing numbers of freckles on my face from morning coffee in the sun on my balcony. The gravel trucks seem to make endless passes on the streets nearby to sweep up the last of winter, and that makes 10pm sunset roller blades through the paths around the neighbourhood just so perfect.
Maybe the most beautiful night
Conditions were so good, the sky so clear, and my intuition so strong that I couldn’t stay on the sofa another moment.
It started gently, barely visible to the eye, but it would be just a matter of time, and not that much time. This beautiful display went on and on, ebbing and flowing, but many times circling back around to more and more of the most beautiful minutes and hours of my life.
There have been so many nights like this, leaving me with this exact feeling as it all happens, but still I cannot help feeling like I’ve never been under a more beautiful show across the sky.
Coming back home after 4am to twilight brightening in the northeastern part of the sky feels like the most Spring thing ever. It fills me with the hope of warmer days, summer storms, and magical light and ever lasting sunsets overnight. And I cannot wait for all of those things, but for now, April brings one of the most amazing stretches of clear nights and breathtaking spells of aurora chases.
