Tales of the beautiful everyday from the North
Chance
The early evening presented a messy situation. Slowly swirling cloud and a little bit of a dilemma on which highway offered a more acceptable risk vs. reward scenario for us, spoiled photographers as we were.
We chose the little more risky approach, closer to cloud, but with more beautiful scenery. Along the way, we’d move through a corner changing the direction we were seeing in front of us, sometimes right into a looming cloud bank. Ohh, the nervousness in my body in those moments. But there had to be trust in what we saw on the maps and we stayed the course - which in the end turned out to be about as perfect as it could have been.
“Chance favours the prepared mind.”
As we were arriving back to the city lights of Whitehorse, and I personally was finally begin to defrost, I explained how grateful I was for our night, for our decision to choose the location we did, and how lucky I felt we were in all of that.
My guest quoted an old French scientist, “Chance favours the prepared mind”.
Maybe he is right, but I still felt very lucky and incredibly fortunate. Part of it, being able to travel the evening with a meteorologist.
The nights you dream of
One of the things that makes me so comfortable chasing the aurora in Whitehorse, and one of the things I looked forward to the most when I was on my way here, was the dynamic weather, extensive highway infrastructure, and mountain scenery, and how all of that felt so much to me like the very first days of when I began chasing the aurora in northern Norway around 2007 and 2008.
“It was our first night out there, and best night, so I just had to close that door and start all over again.”
As just a guide at first, but quickly a friend, and forever a mentor, Kjetil recounted his first time chasing and photographing the aurora on the 29th of October, 2003, to a BBC film crew a few years later. “The snow was actually coloured red”, he said. “It was our first night out there, and best night, so I just had to close that door and start all over again.”
For one of my guests on this night, it was her first time seeing the aurora. And the night started gently, but it wasn’t long before we were front and centre in a spectacular onset of a geomagnetic storm that would buffet the earth for several more days. The reds were the most spectacular I have ever seen, and it reminded me so much of Kjetil’s story from his experience more than 20 years earlier.
The end of summer emotional lull
The August to September transition has been one of the most difficult transitions through my ‘professional’ life. Putting aside the long days and absolute relaxation of summer for constantly overwhelmed and sleepless days and nights of the fall kills me.
But toward the end of summer, I spent some days lounging on my balcony surrounded by a pathetic crop of kale, spinach, and tomato plants, but the most beautiful railing planters of wildflowers, reading a deeper scientific book on the aurora and space weather. It’s one I come back to often, and fail to fully understand. But there is a lot I do grasp, and a lot because of the last 10 years of my life chasing the aurora almost nightly. Adding together my real life experiences with more scientific understandings that go well above my knowledge level makes me feel so genuinely grateful for this part of my life that I’ve chosen and somehow managed to keep pieced together. I guess it made the transition this year just a little bit easier.
“I’ve never been very good at the end of summer transition.”
So, Whitehorse into September continues down the familiar path of ‘worse than I hoped but better than I feared’. Clouds and rain cells frequent the area, but not without escape routes into clearer sky which has lead repeatedly into long nights with the aurora. There still isn’t a higher high than leaving town under a mess of cloud with strong hopes of driving ourselves into those clear pockets, and meeting the aurora there. It is the best feeling in the entire world and these nights lately have been full of them.
No rest for the wicked
A couple aurora chases and a couple day tours packed into a weekend where almost the only time spent at home was for a few hours of sleep, and this is a whirlwind I’m just getting too old for, no matter what I tell myself - or you - so don’t you let me do this again.
But the company and scenery was just so good. We reminisced over aurora chases in Finland and Scandinavia, and what it means to keep such a pure love for 17 and a half years.
Every aurora chase today still feels as special as my earliest ones, and adding in the odd day trip far out into Kluane or the countryside, it feels more and more like those first years in Yellowknife for me. They were a time lived in a constant state of overwhelming love, appreciation, but total exhaustion and slight fear that had me in bed and asleep by 10pm on off nights. The worry of building a business from nothing, totally alone, and overextending myself in every direction eventually gave way to something of a reasonably sustainable life until Covid, and I hope only that the same happens here too.
On the days the aurora dances so wildly and vibrantly, it’s hard to ever imagine a time again when she could be so quiet. So coming home from Kluane on an evening of beautiful sunshine and clear sky, it was hard to imagine the next morning we would be engulfed with low cloud and steady rain. But that thought was cosy, comforting and intriguing more than it ever was discouraging for another few hour scenic drive.
We filled the car with the cosy smell of tea and coffee and hit the roads to recolour my car from ‘celestial silver’ to ‘Earth brown’. Leaving the car in quick bursts for beautiful photo opportunities before again taking refuge back inside were the theme of the morning. And at night, one last chase out into clearing skies for a calmer than expected night of aurora viewing.
The winding down of summer
Discovery of such a beautiful lake so close to the city would probably come a lot sooner than 2 years into living in a new place for most people. But most people is really not me, or Doris, but she does eventually, successfully, carry me in my shell closer to the city and new places, and that’s probably a little bit good for both of us.
We spent some beautiful days at Chadburn Lake toward the end of July, finally bringing our water toys into these glacial waters.
Following that, we ran out for a quick day trip to Kluane checking in on how much mountain, national park beauty it takes to make peace with disgusting 30°C temperatures, and then finally the first aurora chases of the season were successful in early August with more on the way.
