The blog
Abrupt chaos, warm winds, and tripod tumbleweeds
On the run north to escape clouds around Whitehorse, our expected hour or so drive was interrupted out of nowhere about half way through with green and purple curtains raining down over us. We tucked into the nearest driveway and the entire sky filled with green curtains, arcs and vibrant pink edges.
While the aurora retreated into some quieter hours, we moved further up the highway for a better position with the weather for later in the night. Far to the north horizon, a spectacular lightning storm caught all our attention, the aurora still gently everywhere above us.
Almost immediately as we set up here, extended tripods that were not closely guarded were sent tumbling to the ground more times than I could keep count. It was quickly becoming almost comical. And at a temperature of 12°, these winds felt comfortable, almost late summerish, especially compared to the night around freezing two days earlier.
After a lot of patience and hope, the aurora gave us a second beautiful show. Curtains of green and purple again danced around us, and I think I loved the whole of the environment as much as the aurora itself tonight. It’s that magical part of the aurora chase - the wild and the power of nature.
On the way home, we fought the wind the entire way. I had not felt anything like that since a white knuckle drive in north Iceland 11 years earlier. But finally back and parked at home now, I relaxed my hands and surprised even myself at just how tense my hands had actually become.
A friend driving south that night messaged that their entire drive was just as intense, and that all the cruise ships to Skagway had skipped port because of the high winds, which was a nice little confirmation that it wasn’t just me wondering if I was being dramatic.
Chance
The early evening presented a messy situation. Slowly swirling cloud and a little bit of a dilemma on which highway offered a more acceptable risk vs. reward scenario for us, spoiled photographers as we were.
We chose the little more risky approach, closer to cloud, but with more beautiful scenery. Along the way, we’d move through a corner changing the direction we were seeing in front of us, sometimes right into a looming cloud bank. Ohh, the nervousness in my body in those moments. But there had to be trust in what we saw on the maps and we stayed the course - which in the end turned out to be about as perfect as it could have been.
“Chance favours the prepared mind.”
As we were arriving back to the city lights of Whitehorse, and I personally was finally begin to defrost, I explained how grateful I was for our night, for our decision to choose the location we did, and how lucky I felt we were in all of that.
My guest quoted an old French scientist, “Chance favours the prepared mind”.
Maybe he is right, but I still felt very lucky and incredibly fortunate. Part of it, being able to travel the evening with a meteorologist.
The nights you dream of
One of the things that makes me so comfortable chasing the aurora in Whitehorse, and one of the things I looked forward to the most when I was on my way here, was the dynamic weather, extensive highway infrastructure, and mountain scenery, and how all of that felt so much to me like the very first days of when I began chasing the aurora in northern Norway around 2007 and 2008.
“It was our first night out there, and best night, so I just had to close that door and start all over again.”
As just a guide at first, but quickly a friend, and forever a mentor, Kjetil recounted his first time chasing and photographing the aurora on the 29th of October, 2003, to a BBC film crew a few years later. “The snow was actually coloured red”, he said. “It was our first night out there, and best night, so I just had to close that door and start all over again.”
For one of my guests on this night, it was her first time seeing the aurora. And the night started gently, but it wasn’t long before we were front and centre in a spectacular onset of a geomagnetic storm that would buffet the earth for several more days. The reds were the most spectacular I have ever seen, and it reminded me so much of Kjetil’s story from his experience more than 20 years earlier.
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.
