The blog
Fresh snow and fall colours
One last trip out to Kluane before the rest of September fills out with almost nightly aurora chases. It’s my busiest month since 2020, and I’m so thankful for that, but you won’t find me pretending it’s not really hard.
The one thing I’ve wanted more than anything in the world since about March 21st, 2020 - a day after the Northwest Territories locked down for what ended up being almost 2 full years, was security and safety. And the one place you won’t find safety and security, is in a small, tourism sole proprietorship. But I love it. I did before 2020, in all my naivety, and I still do love it today too, but it’s definitely different. I’ve been in and out, searching for day jobs, desk jobs, where everything in my life changes in favour of that security and safety, but for right now, I still carry on here. It’s not that I don’t love this, in fact I probably appreciate it more than I ever have, in a place that’s more beautiful than anywhere I’ve ever lived, but sometimes things just change.
“Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that’s probably because it’s full of shit.”
After a summer of successfully nurturing a pathetic few blades of grass into a now small green oasis in an otherwise sandy construction zone outside my apartment, yellows and reds continue to spring up everywhere around us. All over the mountains, shadows dance revealing entire fields of beautiful fall colour. Clouds lift from the mountain peaks outside of my windows, showing fresh snow that lasts the day or maybe two. It’s magical, and I wish I had more time for intimate nature bathing, all day, every day, but these little moments every day noticing those new patches of yellow, hillsides of red, and peaks with new snow are enough to let out some heavy beauty sighs, and I love that. I really love that a lot.
The end of summer emotional lull
The August to September transition has been one of the most difficult transitions through my ‘professional’ life. Putting aside the long days and absolute relaxation of summer for constantly overwhelmed and sleepless days and nights of the fall kills me.
But toward the end of summer, I spent some days lounging on my balcony surrounded by a pathetic crop of kale, spinach, and tomato plants, but the most beautiful railing planters of wildflowers, reading a deeper scientific book on the aurora and space weather. It’s one I come back to often, and fail to fully understand. But there is a lot I do grasp, and a lot because of the last 10 years of my life chasing the aurora almost nightly. Adding together my real life experiences with more scientific understandings that go well above my knowledge level makes me feel so genuinely grateful for this part of my life that I’ve chosen and somehow managed to keep pieced together. I guess it made the transition this year just a little bit easier.
“I’ve never been very good at the end of summer transition.”
So, Whitehorse into September continues down the familiar path of ‘worse than I hoped but better than I feared’. Clouds and rain cells frequent the area, but not without escape routes into clearer sky which has lead repeatedly into long nights with the aurora. There still isn’t a higher high than leaving town under a mess of cloud with strong hopes of driving ourselves into those clear pockets, and meeting the aurora there. It is the best feeling in the entire world and these nights lately have been full of them.
Back to the scene of the muskelkater
As we were coming down around 8 in the evening, we resigned ourselves to wishing that we had gotten an earlier start to the day - which says a lot about a couple of pure night owls.
The truth, though, is that no matter what time we started our day of berry picking, we were always going to have wished it could have been longer. This was only made worse by just how gorgeous the evening had become. From one of the muddiest drives out in light rain to magical, golden sunlight.
Berry picking has become a yearly ritual for me these last few. I love having these little bursts of flavour and vitamins stored for the winter. I love the small act of rebellion against our grocery cartels in Canada. But more than all that, I love the solace and the quiet way up and far away. It is the best shared silence, ever.
Rain or shine, we climb
While still reeling from my sleepless few days and nights prior, Doris had some friends from Germany arrive in Whitehorse before a small, couple hundred kilometre canoe trip up the Yukon River.
During the cosiest late dinner, Doris had set her sights set on the Kusawa ridge hike for the next day - a light 850m elevation gain over about 4.5 kilometres above Kusawa Lake. We knew the forecast wasn’t great, but the thought of a fjord hike through cloud and mist seemed perfectly fitting.
That evening, home with fresh baked bread and warm soup, muskelkater was already setting in something serious, as if we weren’t expecting it from our shaky legs the entire way down. But our hearts were full, proud of ourselves, in love with the beauty, and already excited for the next time.
No rest for the wicked
A couple aurora chases and a couple day tours packed into a weekend where almost the only time spent at home was for a few hours of sleep, and this is a whirlwind I’m just getting too old for, no matter what I tell myself - or you - so don’t you let me do this again.
But the company and scenery was just so good. We reminisced over aurora chases in Finland and Scandinavia, and what it means to keep such a pure love for 17 and a half years.
Every aurora chase today still feels as special as my earliest ones, and adding in the odd day trip far out into Kluane or the countryside, it feels more and more like those first years in Yellowknife for me. They were a time lived in a constant state of overwhelming love, appreciation, but total exhaustion and slight fear that had me in bed and asleep by 10pm on off nights. The worry of building a business from nothing, totally alone, and overextending myself in every direction eventually gave way to something of a reasonably sustainable life until Covid, and I hope only that the same happens here too.
On the days the aurora dances so wildly and vibrantly, it’s hard to ever imagine a time again when she could be so quiet. So coming home from Kluane on an evening of beautiful sunshine and clear sky, it was hard to imagine the next morning we would be engulfed with low cloud and steady rain. But that thought was cosy, comforting and intriguing more than it ever was discouraging for another few hour scenic drive.
We filled the car with the cosy smell of tea and coffee and hit the roads to recolour my car from ‘celestial silver’ to ‘Earth brown’. Leaving the car in quick bursts for beautiful photo opportunities before again taking refuge back inside were the theme of the morning. And at night, one last chase out into clearing skies for a calmer than expected night of aurora viewing.
