A wish it would never end

Almost 8 hours after I ran out the door, I came back upstairs for a far-beyond-midnight bowl of chocolate Life cereal and was genuinely shocked at the chaos of my kitchen.

I had caught myself completely off guard with just how quickly I ran out of the house a little after 7:30pm.

Shepherd’s pie, saran wrap, and a half drunk cup of tea

I, evidently, messy poured a pot of tea mostly.. partly, into my thermos before running out the front door with my parka hanging by it’s hood off my head, my gloves and toque shoved into my unzipped shoulder camera bag, and with my tripod wedged against my hip being held with my arm, I managed to lock the front door behind me, mostly sure I had all what I needed.

Left behind sitting on the counter was a mostly cooled down uncovered shepherd’s pie, a box of saran wrap for which there was no time, and a half drunk cup of tea which did manage to make it at least into the kitchen from the sofa.

It was from that exact place where I mindlessly tapped ‘SpaceWeatherLive’ on my iPhone, then ‘GOES Magnetometer’, and all within about 5 seconds, I turned to look out the window, got up from the sofa and ran toward the kitchen sliding a half full cup of tea across the counter while rounding the corner to stampede down the stairs and get changed.

I did make it back upstairs to fill my thermos with tea though, of course.

The weak in the stomach feeling

It was the kind of night the aurora could definitely maybe, probably I think if you’re lucky, be visible in Vancouver or Montana. And by the end of the night, during that last hour and the last few photos I took, I knew without a doubt she was. The behaviour of the aurora becomes distinctly unique and the perspective very rare.

16-17 March 2013 in Vancouver, BC.

3-4 November 2021 in Yellowknife, NT.

My heart ached in a strange way, the way it always does when I know the aurora is far reaching. It is mostly a surrealness and raw nostalgia.
It had been the most spectacular night tonight, I could not have asked for more.

Do you hear it?

Soothing singing and goosebumps

Listening to the sounds of the ice while it is beginning to really freeze from a few centimetres is one of my favourite sounds.

You have to imagine the total silence of the nature and from nowhere, echoing pings which feel so natural and soft but also like thunderclaps that make your arm hairs stand.

If it really does become cold now, I hope so much to sit out on the ice and try to record some sounds. Let’s see how the next days are. Håller tummarna.

Signs of winter

The early signs of winter feel late, but I am happy. The flora is soft still, the berries are hanging on, and the ground is entirely snowless, but not frostless. Ice forms overnight but melts away during the day. Iced windows on cars is an every night occurrence now, and each time I freeze my fingers for one more last car wash of the year, I mentally prepare for it to be my last.

I hate to have a dirty car. I really, really don’t love it.

But this was far too beautiful of a day to worry about how dirty the back of my car would be hours later, and the long term forecast still had +6s and +7s in it, so my hose would not be frozen solid yet.
I didn’t know where I wanted to go, I didn’t have any place in mind. Driving just clears my mind.

"October sunshine is not a cheap sunshine."

The sun is all day low in the sky now. The warmth of the sunlight both in temperature and colour is the perfect feeling. It is a strong contrast to the cool air, the cold water, how nature has shed so much leaving just bare branches. October sunshine is not a cheap sunshine. It’s the kind you feel in your bones and in your soul, the kind that makes the forest almost call out in such overwhelming beauty and stillness.

Maybe nothing felt nicer than just sitting out here, sipping hot coffee, occasionally feeling a cloud of mist rush up off the water.

The light changed so slowly and subtly. When the sun did fall behind the trees, there became this almost eerie stillness and immediate chill in the air. The wind died, the river upstream became totally still on the surface and the colours all around so muted.

The drive home was peaceful and interrupted more than once for some moments of bliss with the sunset.

Dinner didn’t take long tonight. It was a leftovers night of course. I took my forever evening tea with me and drove again for the open sky, the water which gently laps at the shore and after some time, the aurora dancing furiously right above.

This was a long, long day, but with almost all of it in the company of warm drinks and nature. This is the most beautiful life, one I really long for in the most consistent way.

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.

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