The longed for April

When I think of April in Yellowknife, I think of 2022. Despite my life going through total upheaval, I had a lot of favourite moments.
On a whim, the territory had technically reopened and was in it’s first weeks of allowing non-residents through it’s borders for the first time in 2 years, but it was predictably still dead.

In my final days and weeks before moving, I often retreated in the evenings to sacred places accessible only via ice roads. I spent night after night in silence under drop dead gorgeous twilight skies and auroral curtains. It was a peacefulness I hadn’t found in years.

Now back 4 years later, it was once again April and I was so excited for these nights ahead. We routinely left town with plenty of time to settle into the countryside under these gorgeous twilight skies. The lingering deep blue of twilight didn’t yet have all of the magic it would in another few days and weeks, because we were still seeing moonrise a short ways into our night. But back to the west, faint arcs of aurora faded into the oranges of sunset and it was beautiful. I savoured all of twilight and just as oranges faded off the horizon, the aurora made up for lost time the night before.