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.

Resetting

How do you follow up nights of such extraordinary beauty - snow that you could see was actually coloured pink and movement that you couldn’t keep up with?

I’m not really sure, actually. But I always come back to what feels like home with the aurora. Just a most genuine, heartfelt love for the whole of the experience and of the aurora herself.

It’s really easy to want to quantify what you see with a number or some kind of activity scale. I understand it, but I just… don’t like it, or I’m not interested in it, so I really just don’t.

The aurora is always beautiful, but you may not describe it always as exciting, or colourful to our eyes. But it’s beautiful, and I think I’m probably nostalgic for this simple beauty where the aurora still felt so elusive and mysterious, where I didn’t know much about it and had to travel for a day and a half to have a chance of seeing it.

Even the most static, faint arcs brought me unreasonable amounts of joy on the sides of these remote roads through Swedish forests and Norwegian fjords. I think that’s where I come back to after nights like last, and most nights, and I settle right back in to that wonder and love I’ve always, always had for her.

A little bit unexpected

I was standing in the lobby of the Chateau Nova, chatting with half my guests for the night ahead while waiting for the other half still to meet us. I was excited for the night ahead. Excited for the clear skies, I was excited to be driving out of town to a brighter twilight sky - you know how much I love this time of year, and I was excited because the aurora conditions were good. Good.

After a beautiful, but not unusual beginning of the night, I took a little time in the car to warm back up. Occasionally, I would open my door and lean half my body precariously out checking the sky behind the car. There was beginning to be a little bit of aurora that intrigued me, so I took my frozen fingers back outside and some minutes later, came back to the car to get everyone else back outside too.

And this is where I just don’t know how to describe the rest.

It is just the potential night-to-night beauty and the unexpected magic of the aurora that cannot really be predicted. I want to call it moments, but it was so much more than that. It was almost exhaustingly long that these pinks and greens danced violently for, and to such an intensity and scale that no photography, and not even some poor quality real time video I shot could give even a hint of justice to truly the kind of beauty here. It is so overwhelming, and one of these nights that are truly just unforgettable.