Tales from the north
A check in from winter
The weather from town tonight steadily improved over the half hour or so we drove, from mostly cloudy in town out to mostly clear further out east. It was, to contrast just a few nights earlier, cold cold. It was an immediate parka night, hood up as the wind blew steadily all night. I switched quickly to thicker mittens with separate liners, and it’s in those moments I wonder how I’m ever going to survive the next 6 months. But somehow these humid, windy nights just below freezing always felt so much worse than the -30s of January. I just hope it’s true again this year.
Our patience out in this wind was not at all in vain. As the hours passed, the aurora danced and filled the sky with greens, purples and pinks. It was everything you hope for, everything you wish for everyone to experience. Magic.
The circles we move in
Tonight started close to town in the east, and ended close to town in the west, but there was a lot in between.
Not wanting to overplay our hand by running far out in the east, we did stay closer to Yellowknife at first. The clouds were, in classic October fashion, very low and fast moving carrying a lot of light pollution from town - problematic while we were seeing very quiet auroral conditions. Even still, some visible aurora came and went between the clouds at various stops.
After three stops out in the east, we had been wholly eaten up by cloud cover, so now well after midnight, we backtracked to town and over to the west where we once again met some stars through lighter cloud. Finally, the quiet auroral conditions had relented and even through the cloud we could see as much.
Stars were eaten up quickly again, and in one final move a few kilometres back toward town, in a heartbeat, we were in the clear. Clear clear.
We tucked into a small driveway, the milky way and aurora overhead, and finished our night off with the deepest beauty sighs and gratitude. It felt like heaven, and a really long night.
This happiness
It’s a late, late October night and I’m not as cold as I thought I should be. But November has to be where the plunge into winter really begins now.
My mittens were too warm to stay on my hands, and the night barely demanded a parka. A wool sweater was more than fine. I was comfortable photographing with bare hands for most of the night, and this feels like a luxury I should not have, not this time of year anymore. But I’m grateful, because I know winter is coming. I know there will be snow drifts up against the side of my home, centimetres of ice creeping in from the edges of my windows, and the cold will be torture on my little frost bitten fingers. I know it’s all coming.
The days at home feel so much darker already, and this brings me such a deep happiness along with our first snow. Every night I’m lighting candles, some mornings need cosy lighting while I have breakfast. It is a tease of the life I love more than anything; dark winter days that demand cosiness at every turn. It’s what I live for - just as much as these still nights in the sweetest company, under the most beautiful sky.
An October escape
There was a little lingering cloud over town as we left tonight, but nothing of any real concern. Aurora conditions were very good, and some aurora was already some visible in the sky above us as we drove out, but just a little patience and I felt fairly sure we were going to be spoiled further.
A tiny little lake frozen over caught my eye in the moonlight as we arrived in the countryside tonight, and my heart sung. Signs of winter.
A lot of tonight felt far removed from some of the more chaotic October nights of late. Everything was simple and stress free, and these nights sometimes are really needed too.
It’s a mess
The last weeks have been a mess of a lot of kilometres chasing down unstable pockets of clear sky, sometimes to the end of the highway. Some nights have been very late, some nights incredibly lucky - arriving to short lived clear skies just in time to meet breathtaking auroral displays - and other nights not quite so lucky finding ourselves trapped under heavier cloud.
It’s also been a time of navigating the first full moon phase that really felt like a full moon phase. It’s still nothing compared to the full moon of winter nights in a snowy landscape, but it was significantly brighter than the moon of the early autumn.
“It feels good sometimes to take a step back.“
These photos have been sitting in this draft of a blog post for more than a week. I’ve been so uninspired. Burnt out - maybe, and complete exhaustion for sure. But it’s cosy to look back at the photos below, remembering the nights and appreciating them. Even when they were just minutes with a clear break long enough to find the aurora there too, it feels really special. I’m grateful for that and for this life - but sometimes taking a little step back helps me feel that more than feeling buried.
