Equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion

A couple of nights with opposite forecasts. “Clear” and “mainly cloudy”, but they meant the same thing, as they usually do… Skepticism of forecasts and predictions, and a subsequent chase into clear sky.

Still they fill me with exhilaration, and equal parts exhaustion.

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Dramatic weather is nothing new to Whitehorse, but a few days above freezing at the end of January flipped the city from the most beautiful, hoar frost covered, crisp white winter wonderland into the quintessentially ugly northern spring of gravel, brown slush, and icy deathtraps.

Now, a week or two later as I sit here and write this, heavy snow finally falls outside blanketing all the frozen brown slush after a night of ice fog sat over the city. Low cloud covers the mountains and the sky is just an endless, flat grey tone.

It’s the cosy winter days I dream of.

The most beautiful part in all of that above freezing mess was the melting of so much snow on the lakes. Puddles formed and refroze, reflecting gorgeous colours and intensities of light from the aurora.

The ice became the loudest I’ve heard this year. All through the night, the lake sung in the deepest tones; a constant companion through the -33° night.

A place beyond belief

In quiet conversation and deep trust

I knew leaving Whitehorse we were in for a long night. Weather maps showed hope, but far, far out. So we drove, and drove and drove and drove.

Our first stop around 100km from town was under quickly disappearing clear sky, but it was our first little taste of the stars and some diffuse aurora. I updated maps and continued further to where it looked like what our eyes could make out on the horizon and the weather maps were in agreement on - a large, relatively stable for Iceland Whitehorse, break of clear sky.

I think our timing tonight could not have been more perfect. It was the kind of timing and circumstance that makes you believe in the pure magic of life. Within minutes of stopping under our clear sky, the aurora danced and danced and danced all around and above us, and continued on until morning.

I can never overstate just how much I love these chases. These nights of powerful weather… the mountain scenery, snowy highways and cold, cold winds are some of the most special moments of life.

Ever humbling

It wasn’t the curtains, all the beautiful structure, the dance or the luminosity. It all felt surreal, humbling beyond reason still.
It was the reds. It was the reds visible to my eyes, in real time. It wasn’t needing a camera to identify them first and then recognize a difference in hue. It was in real time the most beautiful red colour which has alluded me for so long, so many times over the last 16 years. I don’t remember the last time I saw them in this fullness… I don’t know if I ever had.

Cat and mouse

Nights of clear breaks always require some degree of anticipation of auroral activity. These nights become more of the… not if we will find clear sky, but when we should find clear sky. Waiting or chasing, to anticipate or run with.

It’s an out of this world game of cat and mouse, except there are two mice, sometimes running in opposite directions, and you have to catch them at the same time.

“…you said it was a quiet night!”

The aurora consistently filled half the sky tonight, but without much structure or visible movement. It was beautiful, but what I felt was quiet.

‘Quiet’, when the aurora appears over half the sky, is of course, subjective.

Sighs of love

Littered throughout our night were falling stars, including in the above.

Hours passed to an ever changing, but generally quiet arc of northern lights laying across the northern horizon. I was eager to share at the beginning of the night how it’s possible for the aurora to change so quickly that you just can’t imagine it, not realizing of course that several hours later, she would change just so quickly beginning in only seconds from a few faint curtains.

Before that time, and despite temperatures dropping outside, it was just the cosiest night of warm, genuine conversation, laughter, and all things photography and stargazing.

My bleeding heart melted over love, stories, and swelled at a cuteness impossible to describe. And after hours of this, and a spectacular show, the position of the stars had swung dramatically from the beginning of the night and lights had been turned off. Warm beds were very much calling to us all.