The blog
Somewhere between evolution and maturity
I’m taking more time to notice more, to see beauty more, and to enjoy it.
I have always chased the photography in the aurora. It is I think ultimately an endless chase, which is so much of the everlasting interest and love, curiosity. This is a special thing if you can truly have satisfaction in the journey, in the every day. But if you are there to chase it to an end, to find satisfaction only in reaching the end, then I think you never find it.
The aurora never is the same. It never stays the same.
Photographing the aurora has helped me to continually discover so much of just how beautiful it truly is. There are colours and perspectives which, for me, are appreciated most through photography, or I see only through photography. I love this.
But as I’ve ‘chased the photography’ less, I have appreciated the aurora so much more. It feels like an escape, and a rebirth, instead of a ticking clock to an unachievable, superficial satisfaction.
”I like to watch it more.”
There was another guide in Yellowknife who I admired so much. He is an amazing photographer, but with the aurora, he just loved to watch it. It is so special for him, and I always admired that while never understanding it. All these years, I couldn’t make sense of not wanting to photograph every moment, but coming to that place myself, despite not really knowing how or why, or exactly when, I admire it even more.
I still love to photograph the aurora. I will forever. It’s just not in the same way of prioritizing it to the ends of the earth, and it has opened up so much more magic and beauty in the whole of the experience. Standing against the nose of my car, or reclining my seat with the moonroof open, these feel now like the slow motion, eternally grateful moments they should be, rather than worrying about if I’ve taken the perfect picture of the aurora dancing over my head.
As I was driving to a different spot along the Ingraham Trail a few hours into the night, I saw an e-mail come from a guest who stayed with me here long enough ago that I still had my guesthouse. She included a photo she had just taken from her balcony in Vancouver of the aurora over the mountains.
For the first time since leaving Vancouver for Yellowknife, for the aurora, I was right where I wanted to be for so many years, while Vancouver was experiencing what I loved most and chased even there. It was an unbelievably surreal moment, and it placed a smile on my face.
The Iceland effect
I can of course still hear his Icelandic accent while I sat against a heater at the window, looking outside eating breakfast…
“If you don’t like the weather, you can just wait ten minutes.”
I would not say it is often that here we have this ‘four seasons in one day’ type of weather, but this may be as close as I have seen in some time.
I always have loved interesting weather, and as satisfying as 30° on a beach of pure blue skies is, that is not everyday for the rest of my life.
One of the things I do love about living relatively far north is the extreme changes in climate and environment. The difference of 15 sunlight hours between the winter and summer solstice thrills me just as suffering through a 27° summer afternoon in a kayak or a walk through a forest covered in hoar frost at -35° does in the winter.
Inside of those seasons here, consistency still reigns. And that’s why whether it is in Iceland, or here, that to experience some icy patches over puddles, brutal winds, warm sunshine on my face, and a close call with a downpour all in a few hours feels like such a perfect miracle of nature. What beauty and power.
It’s so easy when I go back to British Columbia to visit, to be in the lush, old growth rainforests there and feel this almost condemnation of the forests around Yellowknife for their stunted growth, lack of vibrant greenery or heavily green forest floors.
The trees here just take a hundred years to grow and a hundred years to die
It’s like I just forget about all the beauty the reindeer lichen and mosses on the forest floor here hold, the majestic quality of the tall grasses blowing in the winds, the incredible colours even in the middle of summer before autumn really takes hold. It is all incredible. It’s just very different. Anywhere you step in nature, it is over some of the oldest exposed rock anywhere on this planet - a few billion years.
How beautiful to consider all what this rock has seen, or the reindeer lichen which is barely the size of your hand and has been growing for hundreds of years, the stories it all could tell, everything it has experienced. If you really think about that. How unbelievably special.
Skaftafellsjökull, Iceland
All of these massive boulders, how they are placed and balancing on one another, how every crevice has formed, all by the ice when this was glacial carved. Imagine to see glaciers covering this place, like we still see, for now, in Iceland. It seems so surreal, and something I am appreciating so much more than I ever have before.
The road back
Everyone has always said in some way or another, that when you make your love your work, everything changes.
It is not easy for me to remember back to about 18 months ago. It was a time when I didn’t want to even go to see the aurora. Yet the aurora has represented the strongest love in my life for almost 15 years.
A few weeks after this government locked down, I went to see the aurora, to see if I could find any internal peace, to just take my mind away from constant worry, anxiety and frustration in every moment.
But I couldn’t even do that.
Every moment for that couple hours was just a reminder of everything I was losing. The aurora became a representation of my vulnerability, my loss, my heartbreak, my loneliness both as a business and as a person, a representation of how in the blink of an eye, I could have everything taken away. The pure love, peace and wonder it had represented, the dream it had given me, for over a decade before, all of it, was gone.
Insecurity - if it is deep within ourself, our relationships, our financial picture, or food supply, has to be one of the most horrific feelings we can experience. But to lose such a love, in some ways, I am sure it is worse.
The aurora never lost her beauty. I had stopped seeing it in her.
Perhaps it’s just that time soothes everything
This night is not the first night I’ve been back under the aurora. It may be the first night I have been back with the aurora and felt overwhelmingly a sense of wonder, of freedom, of peace even, and genuine thrill.
Nothing is materially better now than then, but internally, it feels as though something has shifted. It’s almost as if I’ve reunited, or at least walked the first steps of reuniting, with my first love.
Getting back to nature
It had barely been half a week since I was last out on this trail. I had expected many of the trees now had their leaves on the forest floor. In the days which had passed, we had a lot of wind, and sometimes even just a few still days this far north can create a dramatic change in how nature is looking during the fall.
But I just wanted to get back into the heart of nature like this so badly.
My night before had been a very, very late one out with the aurora, and I could have slept all day. But I awoke on just a couple hours of sleep feeling so much energy to go back out into nature… to feel the cool air, smell the sweet forest, hear the rushing water and find a certain stillness. Perhaps a lot of this will look very familar for you, but I couldn’t help but to go back so soon. It felt like the perfect place for the day. There are many snowy, darker days for sleeping coming soon.
“I would just want to hang out there all day and cleanse my soul.”
These beautiful words came from a close friend after I described my previous day out here, and right in the moment of reading them, I just knew I had to come back and soak up every moment that I could.
Tunnel vision
I had become, you could say obsessed, with wishing I could watch every leaf fall from it’s branch, or feel every cool breeze on my face, find every angle where the sun came through the trees to cast long, warm shadows. Truly I didn’t want to leave.
Running into the night
Just grab a hold of my hand
I will lead you through this wonderland
I dare you to close your eyes
And see all the colours in disguise
"Everybody knows that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. What few people realise, it is only through the parts that the whole gets delivered."
I know these nights of leaving the car off, of feeling such high humidity on my skin, of smelling such overwhelming sweetness from nature and hearing only the fish jumping, and loons and owls singing, will be over so soon. I can already hear in my mind the dry crunch of the snow under my boots and the ice singing in the countryside alongside the idle of my car, but right now I’m obsessed with every last drop of moisture in the air and these rare, but beautiful clear nights.
