Just beneath the auroral oval and only a few hundred kilometres from the arctic circle, daytime highs reach for the -20°s, and nighttime lows into the -30°s.
I just live here
In every sense of the expression, winter is far reaching here. For me, that is a little bit of perfection.
"No one of my teachers all throughout school would ever have told you to expect me to become a science based tour guide. But life is not so black and white like that."
This was all just sort of an accident
More than a few years ago, I was taking photos on top of a dirt hill looking down over a fence and onto a runway at Vancouver International Airport. That evolved, just months later, to commuting to the airport for work everyday with my camera bag on my shoulder where I’d load airplane bellies with 32kg suitcases, which conveniently armed me with flight benefits and airside access for photography.
In 2007, I stumbled into a Norwegian aurora chaser, who wasn't trying to guide tours, or inspire anyone to the best thing they've ever done in their life, but it was so.
Several visits, countless nights aurora chasing, and endless weeks later with one of the most amazing aurora chasers in the world, Kjetil Skogli in Tromsø, Norway, my life was changing forever. I had decided at 3am in his front seat while driving back to town from another surreal aurora chase, that all I wanted for my life was to one day follow in his footsteps.
In 2013 and 2014, I left my heart in Iceland at my favourite ever guesthouse - Skógar Guesthouse. The owner, Sigga, without knowing it, had fully inspired so much of Sean's Guesthouse in Yellowknife, which ultimately opened the door to a lifestyle of forever aurora chases.