A night of chaotic serenity

It was a few minutes after 5 in the evening and I leaned up against a north facing window. Yesterday the moonrise was in perfect time with the Belt of Venus. Tonight, the sky was again completely clear, now a deep blue still from twilight, and I felt some sadness in that. I guess you could say twilight lingering past 5pm begins to feel more normal, and what I love so much in the north is the forever darkness and even the forever daylight on the opposite side.

Still, the trees looked so beautiful covered in snow and the sky such a rich colour blue. Some stars were visible, and a few streaks of aurora too. That is not necessarily normal, to see the aurora so early, but it is not the first time also. Maybe a good sign for later.

“It was fine, until it wasn’t.”

A short time later I was just settling in for the night, at least for the next few hours.

The aurora was still arcing over my house, but the Canuck game was just a few minutes in and I was really ready to just crash, zone completely out. I had dinner all cleaned up, lighted candles in all my Kähler houses, and I was lying sideways across my sofa with my untouched, still steaming tea, on the sofa arm. A light headache lingered in the background.

After the hockey game, I would take a hot bath, unless the aurora was so good that I would feel anxiety (it’s a real thing with me) about missing being out with it. But all that was a situation for later. I felt fine in my decision to let go of chasing an early show and instead re-evaluate in a few hours. It was fine, until it wasn’t.

"I guess you could say twilight lingering past 5pm begins to feel more normal..."

My feeling of ‘wait and see for later’ developed overwhelmingly into not a great feeling, and I really had no choice but to take the decision to run down the stairs, grab my keys to remote start my car, and get changed. I once again messy poured my tea from my mug back into the teapot, and then into my thermos. I had reached such a panic to get out the door that I didn’t even let my car warm up for at least 15 minutes, and it was already -40.

It wasn’t until I was down the hill outside my neighbourhood that I had realized I forgot my tripod back inside my front door. So after an almost immediate u-turn and a swing back up my street, I was now on my way out, to chase the early aurora after all.

In the end, initially forgotten tripod and all, it was perfect timing.

When I walked back in my front door just before 8pm, I first just dropped my parka to the floor against the front door, but did hang it up on second thought. There is nothing worse than putting back on a freezing cold parka if I decided to go back out later.

I laughed to myself as I looked back at this chaos, walking up the stairs in just my base layers now. I’m not usually this dramatic.

So, back home and I warm up another mug of lavender cream earl grey tea. I sink back into my sofa catching the last period of the Canuck game. Usually the aurora cycles every few hours, so I knew I had a little time even if I wanted to go back out. I re-lit my candles from earlier and opened up my MacBook, actually starting to write this post. It was still before 9pm, and I kept an eye on the windows of course.

I think I knew, aided by data as ever, pretty much right away that I was going to be going back out. But the little curl up on the sofa in between, with not quite enough time to write all of this, was just what I needed. The whole night was.

When you get back home and just can’t even anymore.

I just hate New Year’s

I have never been that person to go out or to party, to be in large groups, or some loud environments, or just to drink. I hate this pressure to celebrate the new year, that this exact moment or this time should mean something or change something, or we should be happy just for that. I hate feeling this pressure of that. I really hate that.

"I just hate that pressure about traditions."

I hate New Year’s, but in some ways I really love it. I love the time of it. I love the cold and the dark with the warm and the light inside. I love that contrast. I love when the snow is sitting on the trees. I love when we have hoar frost covering everything. I love how the days and the nights feel so cosy. I love making warm meals, I love hearing the familiar sounds in my house from the pressure of the furnace turning on. I love feeling the warm air blow at my feet standing at the kitchen sink.

Actually I would love to stay at home on New Year’s Eve, to play some board games and to make some glühwein. To light all of the candlesticks. I love to celebrate little moments, but in any day, not forced when we have this outside pressure. I started to book off the last couple New Year’s Eves from work because I hate feeling this pressure so much.

On this New Year’s Eve, I tucked away under a throw finishing my tea on the sofa, picking away at some lebkuchen around 7:30pm when I opened AuroraMax on my phone. The aurora was there already, so I checked some data, which also looked very good.

I hesitated because I knew there would be these celebrations outside. Fires on the lakes, cars and snowmobiles everywhere, fireworks. In some way, it would just be nicer to maybe take a warm bath and sleep early. But I bundled myself up, packed some hot tea and some sweets, and found myself a cosy corner on a frozen lake.

"I hate to feel this way that 'Oh, I should do that, I should be like that.' I shouldn't be like anything. Nobody should. We should just do what we feel like."

This night for me was not to celebrate New Year’s. There were fireworks over the treelines in the far distance - they looked beautiful, and a few more passing car lights than usual, but I left all of that aside to just do what I felt like. I didn’t watch the time, I didn’t make any special sayings or traditions. I just tried to enjoy what moment was there. Kicking off my mukluks to curl up and feel the warmth of my heated seat on my toes, how totally peaceful it feels to rest my head against the inside of my beautiful car and watch the aurora right out the window. All the hours I stayed were beautiful and perfect beyond imagination.

Freezing long nights and familiar comforts

Outside the car, the ice still sings

This fall was the warmest one I’ve experienced here, yet it is the earliest I saw the lakes become passable by car. Now the nights are freezing, and after six hours I feel like I can barely function despite spending much of that time tucked away on a dramatically reclined heated seat, with hot tea, and some lebkuchen sent lovingly from halfway across the world in the most perfect ever care package.

The ice layer on the moon roof eventually melts and clears, and the stars become visible overhead. Cloudy weather comes and goes too. The night changes a lot through these hours.

Quiet and alone

One of the best things for me in such cold nights is the usual rogue snowmobiles and party bonfire scenes on the lakes are much less. The time quickly becomes so late that no one else is crazy enough to still be awake and out anyway.

Probably not halfway through the night, I really reach the point where there is no coming back to real warmth. My fingers, my toes, my face… They all just reached the place of being cold in their bones, and a little past 3am that numbing cold becomes too much and sends me back to my warm bed and gives a good sleep for the night.

A lesson from the ice

“This business kills the part of life that is essential… The part that has nothing to do with business.”

There is a scene at the end of The Big Short, my favourite movie, where Michael Burry writes to his investors announcing that he must close down the fund. He has finally been proven right, but a part of him is broken.

"For the past two years, my insides have felt like they're eating themselves."

The temperature was -36°C. I never had heard the ice so loud and violent. The sharp thundering you couldn’t imagine. The vibrations of the ice travelled into my body from my tripod and camera. I felt a crack form under my feet in real time.

Each rumble sent shivers up my body and made my heart beat more noticably, but I was standing in the middle of a frozen lake, on ice I had no idea the thickness of. Centimetres of snow covered the ice, and for hours before the aurora covered the sky, it was just in starlight. The power of nature was overwhelming, and the beauty of a moment was strong, but there was something much more too.

I didn’t for a moment have any fight or flight. No instinct to even move. The ice would be what it would be, and I would just let it, and take from it what beauty I could. I was in the middle of it, the literal middle, and I had no control, and it actually felt really good. Like something I needed. A broken soul, reaching maybe just a place of acceptance.

---

"People want an authority to tell them how to value things, but they choose this authority not based on facts or results. They choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar."

When the pale light fades

62.45°N

It isn’t as far north as I would love to live, but it is still an environment I love a lot. The days are short by any normal standard of living, but I wish they were shorter.
Waking up after 9 and getting a cup of hot coffee in my hands to stand at the window and watch magnificent winter sunrises that last forever is something I will always cherish of this place.

Finally some centimetres of snow fell over the weekend, likely burying any last remaining clear lake ice. It feels so wrong that we reach winter solstice in under one month already. Like the short days of always golden sunlight, orange clouds, and midday twilight just don’t last long enough.

How can you make sense of this overwhelming love of winter? The deprivation of sunlight giving deeper meaning to the presence of it maybe. Feeling the sunlight hit my face this time of year is magical. Just like all of winter, those little moments slow me down to absorb more. Molasses, ginger, cardamom and allspice bring this comforting warmth inside, and I am sure coffee never tastes better. Warmth of a candle or a car vent mean so much. I crave to sleep a lot, and to be wrapped up in soft and cosy fabrics.

So for this feeling of home which the depth of winter brings me? Maybe it is the sharp contrasts leading to greater recognition. More conscious recognition and loving-on. The dark and the light, the warm and cold, like drinking a hot coffee sitting in -33°. Maybe it is something more innate, something in my bones or my soul, or something picked up somewhere along my way.

But for right now with tired eyes in dim lighting, I tuck away in my linen bedding, pushing aside half a mountain of pillows, and in 7 hours maybe I’ll be awake for sunrise, but maybe I’ll sleep right through it. Either way it’s okay, because winter is for slowing down and staying cosy. So let the winter winds blow, the snow drifts grow, and the dim window lights continue to glow.