Tales of the beautiful everyday from the North
Facing winter head on
Coming out of a fresh 30cm snowfall several days ago, temperatures were running straight for the deep -30s for as long as Environment Canada would show.
The morning after our snowfall, I woke up to see the trees swaying dramatically outside my bedroom window. I thought about tour that night and immediately wanted to pull my duvet over my head and go right back to sleep.
When I came downstairs and saw snow drifts across my patio and snow pushed up against my door frame, I could hear in my mind the squeaks and stiffness of my poor little car already having not moved for days and it made me wince.
All is love and pain in these winter days
After more than 10 years living in the north, I have my eyes wide open to life here. I know the struggles of daily life in the north through the winter, but it doesn’t get any easier. It just becomes more familiar. I still hate the squeaks of rubber bushings not flexing like they do in normal environments. I hate my momentary lapses of judgment leading to incredible pain touching metal that’s been outside for an hour at -37. There are a lot of hard moments, but they are also what makes life here so special.
The wind settled, somewhat, by the time we settled in the countryside under this clear sky. The aurora started very gently, but was soon enough vibrant to our eyes even in the face of a full winter moon.
Real November nights
November has given me some stretches of quieter nights at home, and it was a time I was really looking forward to later in October. I knew this heavy and dense cloud would sit over Yellowknife for days at a time, heavier snowfalls would come and ice fog would blanket the city in white. Occasionally, pink would emerge low on the southwest horizon in the early afternoon for sunset. These were moments I routinely fell in love with. They felt precious.
City streets and highways are frozen. My winter tires and AWD earn their keep in the countryside on tour nights. The snow and the air are so dry, and just one night without moisturizing will leave me with painfully cracked knuckles. There’s no slush in this environment anymore. Temperatures are steady around -15, moving to -30 in the coming days, and the sound of the cars on the streets are tires spinning on ice off stop lights and gravel stuck in tires clicking against the asphalt.
This is all so strangely comfortingly Yellowknife and it is for so many more months ahead.
Hiding throughout some of these nights was the warmest company and most beautiful people still out on aurora chases with me. Every single night began with a scrape of heavy ice off my car windows, and then leaving town in dense cloud, passing through kilometres of low visibility from ice fog.
Almost every one of these nights has been either the longest drives to the end of the highway, or just a few kilometres outside of the city limits, and on one night — aurora viewing at both the end of the highway and the beginning. It’s been a strange mix, but of course we take whatever clear sky we can through this time, and those skies have been immensely rewarding.
The first snow
The light around my home the last few days has been breathtaking. It’s the end of October, so the sun is not plentiful. The days are shorter, and it’s more our notoriously cloudy time. I appreciate every moment of sunlight so much.
I’ve spent these days chasing golden hour, sunset, and blue hour around my home with my phone in hand, never able to appreciate it enough. It’s the feeling of winter. Short days and beautiful light. Contrasts of warm and cool - colours and temperatures.
I spent last night on tour under a gorgeous clear sky. By the time I woke up in the morning, everything was white. Our first snow had arrived, and now it’s almost 16 hours later around 2:30 in the morning and the snow has not stopped. Maybe some 5-8cm has fallen. It was a night off for me tonight, and still I’m a night owl - of course.
This snow day has filled my heart with such overwhelming love. My breakfast and slow morning coffee, my computer work beside the window on the sofa, and my errands out in town all felt so much more of my pace and my world. Every moment today felt like how life should feel like. Cosy, quiet, slow and completely in love. Out my window now, the sky and neighbourhood glow in that magical bright white light that only fresh snow and snow clouds can give. Little fox prints surround my place outside, and inside, my radiators creak as they heat and cool off. I just don’t want to go to bed because this welcoming of winter is much too beautiful to miss a moment of.
Pain from the north
The wind here is unrelenting. It’s magical on those 30° summer nights, but that seems a world away still. For now, it remains painful on my hands and ears. A reminder of the north.
Walks through a hilly neighbourhood and up into the mountains gives a little peace to my mind, and the opportunity for endless nose sniffling out loud. I stop at a backyard to give the most beautiful cat some love through it’s fence. And then cross the steps into the nature trails, passing the sign that warns of rattlesnakes. I hate snakes.
The skies here never stay the same. Sunset and twilight over the mountains feels so magical. It’s an intense feeling. The sunset kept changing to become more and more beautiful. For only minutes, low fast moving clouds would light up in pink sunlight against varying depths of blues, and then so quickly those clouds lost their pink. It was magic.
I was taking the same photo over and over again, convinced each one was the most beautiful. These are good evenings, but I can’t wait until it’s truly warm and my ears don’t hurt in the wind.
A breath of fresh air
Rains
Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a pouring BC rain through a cracked open window is just so beyond perfect. I wish I could go back to that moment over and over and over again.
Of course it’s easy to be so in love with the BC rain when you’re away from it for the better part of a decade. It’s the low cloud, misty, constantly drizzling sort of weather that I do deeply miss after a winter of -40 and endless ice and snow.
"Of course it's easy to be so in love with the BC rain when you're away from it for the better part of a decade."
Walks through the forests reawakened my senses. I dug my fingers into every rain-soaked moss, ran my hands through massive ferns, and stared completely mesmerized at their newest fronds still wound tightly. I must have touched hundreds of leaves, every branch within arms reach, transferred every little water droplet hanging off the edge of a leaf onto my finger.
The most delicate leaves bounced at the impact of raindrops and light gusts of wind. The sweet forest smells overwhelmed me in ways I could never describe. They stopped me dead in my tracks. I became obsessed.
It was not just a reawakening of my senses, but of my soul too. Every walk, I never wanted to leave.
