Getting my feet wet

It was finally the May night I had waited years for.

It was still, quite literally, freezing, but warm enough the Yellowknife River had finally started to break up. I bundled up as if I was going out on tour — leggings, mittens, a toque, but Birkenstocks.

My recently purchased kayak, which since weeks earlier, had made a home of my stairs, could finally be loaded through the three rows of my Sienna all the way to the dash and taken out to the Ingraham Trail for a midnight paddle amongst thousands of migratory birds.

With my pants and leggings pushed up, I walked my kayak into the river, hopped in, dried off my feet, pulled on thick woolen socks and shimmied the towel down between my feet and the bottom of the kayak for a little insulation, and set off upstream to meet the edge of the ice, and then back downstream to meet birds as far as the eye could see.

It was bliss, everything I had been missing and longing for about the late spring, but yes, storage may remain a small issue…

The beginning of summer hibernation

Passing the middle of April there was still no sign of the ice roads reaching their end, and despite my grumpiness about the half metre of snow still in my north facing backyard, deep inside I was happy for the continuing cold keeping these ice roads around for this little while longer.

But with my last tour behind me, I was wasting little time savouring cosy nights at home in bed, writing these posts and catching up on so much of the rest of life, including hours and hours on my yoga mat without a care in the world.

This slower pace left space for aurora chases if I felt like it, just because, and on this night the conditions were all just perfect to make one last run into the night to my favourite lake for such a beautiful few hours.

One last cherished tour of the year, and my thank you

I’ve had a lot to love and a lot to appreciate this year, and the last few tours of the season always have felt for me like a time where I can step back a little to reflect, where I can find an even deeper love and enjoyment in this. I’ve said for a long time that the aurora feels like a meditation for me, or an open eye meditation, and never has it felt more true than this last week of the season. I have loved every moment.

It is surreal to think about making it through another year with my business and this life. I have met the most beautiful people from all across the globe, bonding over everything from Race Across the World to yoga, to breathtaking moments with the aurora herself. So many of you returned from just months prior to a full decade ago and that’s something I just wasn’t prepared for. You continue to give me a full heart and lifelong friendships I’ll cherish forever. But I think more than anything, you give me hope, and a love shared that we can always come back to when the world is just too much, which does feel like a lot of the time right now.

Thank you for another year of your overwhelming love and support. None of this would be here without you, and for that, I am humbled and thankful beyond words.

The comforts of April

I was very much in love with my April nights routine by now. Walking out of the house to the car in a crisp but reasonable, after this winter, air temperature while the sky was a beautiful bright twilight felt so reassuring and comfortable. Each night now was 6 minutes shorter than the last, but we weren’t making a habit of leaving town any later. I was loving every moment of these nights and I knew I would miss them so much, which made savouring every last moment so much more essential.

The end of my season was just a few tours away now and that provided some relief after such a long, exhausting season and first year of just life back in Yellowknife. In a stark contrast to feeling like this last year was an onslaught of chaos and messiness in my life, these final nights carried such a calm. I couldn’t wait for them to begin, and I didn’t want them to end. There wasn’t a worry about tomorrow, except about what I was going to bake, or when my next night off will be. I just wanted to live in the endless beauty of these nights forever.

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A mess of excitement

It was early in the night after another warming April day. Temperatures would again reach for close to -20 overnight, but we were barely -10 by the time we parked, and after this winter, that may as well have been Mexico to me.

So after a much shorter than anticipated drive from town, we did stop just off the side of the highway to mostly clear sky before a threatening cloud bank in the distance. From the car, we scurried away and down a short path to our waiting aurora.
In a mess of excitement, running from side to side, camera bags and clothing quickly became strewn across the snow covering the frozen pond we had set up on.

Fleeting moments of calm allowed us, or me at least, to catch our (my) breath before another wave of spectacular colour and dance lifted overhead. The magic once again felt endless and overwhelming.

Then finally, as auroral activity waned, and parkas were reclaimed from the snow, we very slowly packed our tripods and cameras away leaving just my binoculars set up focused to the moonrise on the horizon. We waited patiently for the most gorgeous view of it before eventually making our short drive back to town after another, literally, breathtaking night.