The long drive

If you could erase the few kilometres through Jasper, unsuccessfully trying to find a Tim Hortons drive-thru, the feeling over two full days and 2,000 kilometres was an overwhelming one of loneliness, but perfect cosiness.

I love to drive, so much, which definitely hasn’t always been the case, but that’s a long story for another time.

Every single drive south and back north over all of the years I’ve lived here, I’ve enjoyed immensely, but there was something so different about this drive home. It felt especially lonely and isolated, in a really good and comforting way. Many drive-thru coffees brought me such warmth and enjoyment, and random snacks of licorice, apples, hashbrowns and McDonald’s apple pies (I’m not ashamed) were all part of this comfort.

It’s difficult to describe pulling into a gas station and stepping outside instantly shivering after hours of being nestled into a heated seat. But that crispness and fresh air, that’s a deep breath and awkward stretch moment truly to savour before getting right back in my favourite ever car, fully fuelled up and ready to continue on. There’s something really beautiful in those brief moments.

It becomes like a home for those days of driving, perhaps that’s just it, and for this complete homebody, that is so, so important and perfect.

At the end of 14 hours on my first day, I pulled into a quiet hotel for the night after chasing a magnificent sunset right into the deepest twilight before total darkness. I unloaded, quickly, two boxes of tropical plants, a couple very full IKEA blue bags, my suitcase, and a few other random things before making one last trip out for the night.

This whole day was with a light-hearted but meaningful-to-me time crunch, because KFC closed at 10pm.
Part of being happy is knowing what you love, what feels good, and for me at the end of all this in a state of total exhaustion, the spicy plant-based KFC chicken sandwich meal in front of the fireplace in my dimly lit room, watching HGTV, as frivolous as that seems, made me really happy.

I know that I don’t have any photos to give even faint justice to just how beautiful the fall colours were all the way up to Yellowknife, or any words to convey that magic of feeling gentle sunrise and sunset light hitting my face in the moments between mountains or forests, but it was all unforgettable, and all of this was just another tip of the roadtrip iceberg for me.

Coffee and crowberries

The wind today howled. The type of gusts that make you wish to spread your arms and just let it carry you half a step backward while the trees of the forest around give some loud creaking noises.

It was the most perfect afternoon to sit quietly with a warm coffee, pick at small bushes of ripening crowberries and watch the wind whip up water across a small lake.

That was needed

Yesterday was like waking up in a totally different season. The air was cool, the sun is staying lower in the sky, and these kinds of clouds always make me think of the fall, especially those few sunny days we get through October.

It felt like just the perfect day to bundle up a little bit and take a cosy coffee out with me to the water. All of the colours of nature now are so beautiful and the smells of the forest are so strong, pure and sweet.

Another lynx moving through the forest from some distance away.

A magic lurking within

I always thought there is no way to capture that majesty that is so strong within a forest, like you just want to bottle up the lush stillness to keep forever. It is perfect. There is something about just one small few metres of an entire shoreline that draws you in and almost grabs you to keep you near, and then the light hits it just right and it’s as close to keeping something tangible from it as I’ve found, but still a long way from those real moments.

This sunset gave chills to my arms. Almost a carbon copy of summer skies from cottage country in Ontario. Sure, some mosquitos and flies, but nothing a short bath in repellant can’t help to fix. Really though, this overwhelming stillness and softness in the sky - pastel colours, a storm threatening on one side and this surreal sunset on the other, actually warm air - really - I think we had 27°C today, and total quiet.

What a beautiful life to worry not of the time, if it’s 9pm or 1am. It doesn’t matter. The world around just becomes more quiet and more beautiful, the sky ever changing.

In previous years, I always feel ready for the dark nights to return and for winter to come back but, and despite being just over summer solstice, it’s different this year. I really wish this never ends.

A happiness unmatched

A year or two ago, a guest on tour had told me they had rented a car and drove to the end of the Ingraham Trail. They had photos of river otters, in the middle of winter, laying up on the ice eating some fish. I couldn’t believe it. I was ecstatic for them and thought I’d just die to see otters myself here someday. Earlier this ‘summer’, minutes after I was looking eye to eye with a lynx on the shore, just a few metres from my kayak, a river otter swam up and curiously stayed around me for some minutes before disappearing back under water and swimming away. I was just amazed, and of course too much like a deer in headlights to have changed lenses.

If you follow closely in on the ‘v’ of the ripples of the water, you can see the little otter poking up.

6 years coming

Almost a thousand nights driving the highways outside of Yellowknife. Lynx sightings has been few and far between, but there have been a few.

I just cannot tell you how I have dreamt of being able to photograph one in the daytime though, instead of always just catching their eyes in headlights at 2am. This night I was slowly just spacily paddling along the shore when something a little further down the shore at the water’s edge caught my eye. It was a lynx, and my heart shot to my throat. I froze. It walked casually through a more heavily forested area as I crept behind until I came to an open rock face. I had lost sight of it, but I just sat at the shore amazed I had the view I did and listening for any noises in the forest. Then after about a minute, I looked up, and the lynx was just staring down at me. Exactly like your cuddly house cat on the arm of your sofa. This might have been the most perfect moment of my entire life. I could have stayed there forever.

The next few nights were filled with more magic still. One of the most surreal sunsets and beautiful light I have ever seen.

Another night, I had paddled closer to the shore to give a lot of space for an approaching boat still far down the river and that lead me right to two black bears at the shore.

Homebody homebody homebody

Most recently since these nights, when it was still cold enough to need to cover my frostbitten ears, I have been hunkered down in front of my computer for more time than is healthy, working away on the back end of my site and making visible changes too. The overnight twilight skies have been even more spectacular than I remember, and a few thunderstorms have passed through as well.

Sacrificing of my blood to the mosquitos that await me in the evenings out in my garden has resumed. After six years of searching, I have found lingonberry bushes in Canada that are now in the ground and already thriving at the side of my place. You can never understand the happiness in my heart of having my very own lingonberry bushes. They are my favourite, favourite berries by far, and so much of my nostalgia from Scandinavia.
Green is peeking from the dirt in my garden boxes, and I have made room for a few more mature berry bushes and trees still.

This already has been entirely my dream northern summer, and I just can’t say how happy it makes me.