The April Lovefest Soldiers Right Along

On a night where the space weather data kind of made you want to just curl up into the fetal position on the bamboo floor of your living room wishing only for a high speed wind stream, or something, anything (don't worry, one will be here in a couple nights), within minutes of stepping outside the car into a night of -26°, the aurora was almost inexplicably beautiful. Of course, poor data can't last forever. By the end of the night, we were swimming (bad reference to use on a frozen lake in spring?) through wonderful looking data, which of course, became irrelevant by that time, anyway.

Outbound Text Messages, A Second Go of It, and The Dream

It was just three of us out tonight, and my two guests making a second run for the aurora after getting a glimpse of her in Finland a couple years ago. Tonight though, the sky clarity had me feeling more amazed to be out there than I had been in maybe weeks. So much so I couldn't help but just excitedly text a friend out guiding his own tour tonight too, and then my girlfriend back home to tell her how much I wish she had come out with us tonight, because the sunset, and the purple of the aurora, and as both faded, the milky way and some new (to me, obviously) star clusters and nebulas. I felt like a child. 

The Photo

The one just above this line, the little one that's cropped funny and sits above every blog post. This photo drew that emotional connection to everything I love about this life. It represents a little stronger auroral activity to be over in the western sky so early, the deep twilight sky stretching late into the night and the quieting tourist season. It's the little sign of the home stretch to lazy days back in my girlfriend's sleepy small town in the south, camping in American national parks before their government gives more of them away to billion dollar corporations caring only to profit off what's underneath them, and then buy off more government officials so they can repeat the cycle. It's morning coffee on the patio, harvesting berries from our fruit bushes, and probably planting more of them, then eloquently using words I cannot repeat on this blog while I dig holes straight into the Canadian Shield for them. It's the summer is coming and I'm going to love on every last moment of all of this again this year photo.

Worth Blogging About, This Time

These are the kinds of nights I go back and forth about on blogging. We saw the aurora, just a little bit. The skies were clear, for little bits. If you watched intently, you may have noticed the aurora moving really just a little bit. Even the 38km/h gusts of wind at -18° could be enjoyable, in some sick farewell to winter knowing full well that summer will be here so soon, just a little bit.

Welcomed Returns

At the beginning of the night, it was the Milky Way leaning gently across the horizon. Pinks, purples and greens danced quickly around us not long after. And to end the night, we focused some binoculars just above the tree line toward the horizon where the moon began climbing into the sky. If you didn't know any better, you could have mistaken it for sunrise.