Tales from the north
Alpenglühen
We wanted to leave town earlier tonight, and once again we weren’t sure if we were going to be out all night or not. We’d cross the aurora bridge later. Our tripods were in the back anyway, and we had armed ourselves with ample snacks. We fuelled up the car with gas and ourselves with coffee, so we were all set either way.
The weather was magically dramatic, prompting highway shoulder pullovers several times along the way out. I can never, ever resist these views. It was hard not to rush all the way. I knew how beautiful the ice was, and I couldn’t wait to get back to it with more daylight tonight. I could have flown for hours and hours, taken thousands of photos and far too much video flying over the ice. It was one of the most magical things I’ve ever seen, or as you’re used to hearing me say here, maybe the most beautiful experience of my life.
I had never heard of “Alpenghüen” before Doris’ soft whisper of it as we stood, still in our parkas of course, marvelling at the pink sunlight kissing snowy peaks down the lake. But it was perfect, the perfect word for the perfect moment.
For much of the night, we wished the sky would break open just a little more in the northwest to allow the sun to come through to us and light the mountains surrounding us.
It’s another game I play with the weather. I would rather risk too much cloud than none at all when we are chasing sunsets, but there’s always a balance to strike there. When the light did break through close to sunset, there wasn’t any way to perfectly capture the magic of that light, so we enjoyed it mostly just meandering our way back along the beach to the car.
As we reached the top of the dirt road to meet back up with the Alaska Highway, I thought we should check aurora conditions just in case. After all, we were now almost a half hour past midnight under a sky that had cleared dramatically.
“Great that we checked this before we left the beach” I said, tongue in cheek.
The dirt road isn’t the easiest drive in the world, and it would have been great to know just how good aurora conditions were before we drove a half hour back up to the highway. But after mulling over options for a few minutes, we u-turned ourselves back down toward the lake arriving just in time to see curtains of the aurora begin to dance dramatically overhead.
My dream May
For a year, I’ve been so looking forward to these nights again. I loved the memory of them so much, it almost seemed improbable I would find that same love in them again this year.
But it’s the memory of the dust clouds rising behind the car travelling down narrow gravel roads deep in the countryside and seeing beautiful golden light fall over endless forests and up mountains which make me hopeful. They are the small moments and the simple things, the real things that tie these nights to my heart just as much as the beautiful photography.
Short of breath
It wasn’t just the weight of my camera bag and balancing walking over river rock along the beach for kilometres, it was everything else around it. These nights are just filled with my deepest, most pure loves in this life.
They are the nights that energize me and fully awaken my soul. I could stay out all night in the quiet of the countryside, putting aside sleep again. All of the sound around is just the swans and ducks, and the ice crushing up against itself. Occasionally we hear elk calls from the forest behind us while we stand on the beach, but it is an overwhelmingly soul calming quiet.
Heavy eyes
For all of my love of May and energy I get from these perfect nights in the countryside that are full of real life, I still come back home and crash. I settle myself into my little office with my laptop to write and edit photos, and my eyes get heavy so quickly. I can’t even put together all the images for a single post. I just want to sleep, and sleep and sleep and sleep. It is a strange contrast in life to feel the extremes so intensely, but it’s a part of the spring here I’m just so in love with.
A quick check in on spring melt
A year ago, I couldn’t understand how beautiful the end of April and beginning of May was here. I was in it but I couldn’t make sense of it.
I struggled every night choosing between playoff hockey double headers or long countryside sunset drives and drone flights. The sunset chases and changes in the ice drove me night after night into the latest hours of the night with a chest so full of love it constantly felt like it was going to explode. But it was not always like this.
“I always hated May so much.”
There was a time not long ago when almost the day after my last April aurora chase in Yellowknife, I would be fulfilling an itch to leave the territory as fast as I possibly could to go south until summer was in full swing and there wasn’t a trace of the dusty, uncomfortably bright and underwhelmingly dead countryside of May.
But May in Whitehorse cannot go slow enough. I wish the nights would last forever, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here. This weekend was the perfect opportunity to check in on the progress of spring, and all of what I fell so in love with a year ago is right on schedule. I never love losing the aurora for the summer, but as she begins to inevitably fade into later and later and everlasting sunsets and sunrises for the next few months, I am so ready for these magical evenings that are just ahead.
Weeks of strong contrasts
The warmth of the spring sun cannot be mistaken now, but still the cold wind cannot be either. A time of contrasts continue on - long, long days with the most magnificent sunshine and car washing temperatures while brief dark and cool nights fill with the aurora still.
Swan Haven, my favourite Yukon discovery last spring, is home once again to some 1,000+ tundra and trumpeter swans. Their numbers are on the decline now as they move on for the further north. The shore ice is decreasing every day out there, and everywhere else.
Some kilometres further south, moose nibble buds off branches and play in open fields buried under 40cm of snow. On mountain sides everywhere, the south facing slopes are void of any snow or signs of winter while the north facing sides still look like they are stuck in February.
Down in Carcross, it was the final few days of quiet before the cruise ships begin their returns to Skagway at the end of April.
And back at home, I have my first light sunburn of the year and increasing numbers of freckles on my face from morning coffee in the sun on my balcony. The gravel trucks seem to make endless passes on the streets nearby to sweep up the last of winter, and that makes 10pm sunset roller blades through the paths around the neighbourhood just so perfect.
Heaven on earth
The struggles and rewards of a 5:10am departure
Even thinking about how much I love roadtrips, love to drive, and love any drive involving the north, I still thought to myself that I maybe would rather fly, given the choice.
I remain convinced the 2 hours between Whitehorse and Vancouver at some 35,000ft is among the most beautiful time I could spend anywhere in the world, especially as we traded the last of the northern lights for sunrise and the typically cosy service from Air North.
The endless mountains, the glaciers, the brightening twilight sky so soft and seemingly endless coffee and perfect little breakfast on board just could not have made for a better far too early morning. Although one more sleepless night at the end of an aurora season was nothing new under the sun.
So this quick week away was the best of both worlds - another treat of a flight down, and a three night, 2,800km drive back up a few days later - the most relaxed and leisurely schedule I’ve ever had as long as I’ve been in the north.
After a second day of 800+ kilometres, we settled into our wood cabin in the middle of nowhere with leftover Subway, which we quickly decided to postpone enjoying until after a late night trip to the Liard Hot Springs just 60km away. The drive further along the shores of Muncho Lake and through the Liard bison herd was breathtaking, as it always is.
Spending golden hour, sunset and twilight in these natural springs ranging from 34°-44°C was nothing short of heavenly. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves, and the loudest sound was the water trickling into the pools.
So of course we made another stop there on our morning out before continuing home. The few degrees below zero meant it was a cold, quick change into our swim suits, but then it was all heavenly and the most relaxed 700 kilometres home from there.
