The depth of winter

From the solstice, we have gained already more than one hour of daylight. Just like that, it feels as though the darkness of winter begins to slip away. The full moon rises over the middle of the day and sets not until the late morning. From that, the darkness of the evenings does not fully come and blue hour carries an even more special feeling. The deep blue twilight sky over a snow covered countryside feels incredibly nostalgic. Younger, but no less in love, I chased these beautiful hours of light through the very north of Scandinavia for months at a time. They represented the everyday magic of life I longed so deeply for.

The nostalgia of those days helps me to better enjoy these ones. It gives a connection of love to these chases of light and hours of stillness in winterscapes. It helps to separate what I love so much, this northern everyday life, from the government and from their policy decisions. It helps to take away the names, to detach those superficialities from the forests, the lakes, the light and the temperatures to preserve that love, and that wonder of life that is so essential to life.

"The deep blue twilight sky over a snow covered landscape feels incredibly nostalgic."

In these few days of only -20°, it feels like I can breathe easier and connect more purely. I can keep my balaclava down a little bit more, feel the cold air on my face, keep my hood down to hear more, even to breathe deeper breaths. All of the magic in the memories of those forever-ago polar night skies I can bring into these winter night skies, and that feels very needed. Beyond words.

"The first moments of the sun reaching over the horizon and touching the landscape, and touching my face... That is the best."

I just hate New Year’s

I have never been that person to go out or to party, to be in large groups, or some loud environments, or just to drink. I hate this pressure to celebrate the new year, that this exact moment or this time should mean something or change something, or we should be happy just for that. I hate feeling this pressure of that. I really hate that.

"I just hate that pressure about traditions."

I hate New Year’s, but in some ways I really love it. I love the time of it. I love the cold and the dark with the warm and the light inside. I love that contrast. I love when the snow is sitting on the trees. I love when we have hoar frost covering everything. I love how the days and the nights feel so cosy. I love making warm meals, I love hearing the familiar sounds in my house from the pressure of the furnace turning on. I love feeling the warm air blow at my feet standing at the kitchen sink.

Actually I would love to stay at home on New Year’s Eve, to play some board games and to make some glühwein. To light all of the candlesticks. I love to celebrate little moments, but in any day, not forced when we have this outside pressure. I started to book off the last couple New Year’s Eves from work because I hate feeling this pressure so much.

On this New Year’s Eve, I tucked away under a throw finishing my tea on the sofa, picking away at some lebkuchen around 7:30pm when I opened AuroraMax on my phone. The aurora was there already, so I checked some data, which also looked very good.

I hesitated because I knew there would be these celebrations outside. Fires on the lakes, cars and snowmobiles everywhere, fireworks. In some way, it would just be nicer to maybe take a warm bath and sleep early. But I bundled myself up, packed some hot tea and some sweets, and found myself a cosy corner on a frozen lake.

"I hate to feel this way that 'Oh, I should do that, I should be like that.' I shouldn't be like anything. Nobody should. We should just do what we feel like."

This night for me was not to celebrate New Year’s. There were fireworks over the treelines in the far distance - they looked beautiful, and a few more passing car lights than usual, but I left all of that aside to just do what I felt like. I didn’t watch the time, I didn’t make any special sayings or traditions. I just tried to enjoy what moment was there. Kicking off my mukluks to curl up and feel the warmth of my heated seat on my toes, how totally peaceful it feels to rest my head against the inside of my beautiful car and watch the aurora right out the window. All the hours I stayed were beautiful and perfect beyond imagination.

Freezing long nights and familiar comforts

Outside the car, the ice still sings

This fall was the warmest one I’ve experienced here, yet it is the earliest I saw the lakes become passable by car. Now the nights are freezing, and after six hours I feel like I can barely function despite spending much of that time tucked away on a dramatically reclined heated seat, with hot tea, and some lebkuchen sent lovingly from halfway across the world in the most perfect ever care package.

The ice layer on the moon roof eventually melts and clears, and the stars become visible overhead. Cloudy weather comes and goes too. The night changes a lot through these hours.

Quiet and alone

One of the best things for me in such cold nights is the usual rogue snowmobiles and party bonfire scenes on the lakes are much less. The time quickly becomes so late that no one else is crazy enough to still be awake and out anyway.

Probably not halfway through the night, I really reach the point where there is no coming back to real warmth. My fingers, my toes, my face… They all just reached the place of being cold in their bones, and a little past 3am that numbing cold becomes too much and sends me back to my warm bed and gives a good sleep for the night.

Moments of joy

An instinctual u-turn

I knew the section of the highway I was driving through, I had driven it hundreds of times before. I knew the beauty there, but before I even left the house I had set out in my mind a destination rather than a journey.

Still hundreds of metres away, I could see the mist rising from the river. I slowed from the not even 70km/h I was driving and I admired how the sunlight was turning the rising mist gold. Then the sunlight broke through the forest. I released my foot from the accelerator but not yet touching the brake. With my eyes not particularly focused on the road, I travelled probably several hundred metres more while I pondered stopping. Was some… ‘destination’ really so perfect or important?

I sped up and recentered in the highway to drive on, but then immediately slowed, veered again to the side, and doubled back to leave my car at the side of the road for a while. To be in that present moment ended up giving some of the best moments in months.

"I just got to find something physical that lets the energy out. It just creates room for your thoughts, and just forces you to be in the present moment. And the more you are in the present moment, the more good decisions you are going to take and it's going to lead to a better life."

Running through the forest

In such a long time, I never felt the happiness I did for the minutes of just running alone through this forest covered in the snow. Kicking up snow that sparkled in the sunlight and running to nowhere for no other reason than it just felt so beautiful. Like I had to get the energy out, like this was the only way to let out being so overwhelmed with the beauty. I would throw my arms out as I randomly ran steps, like it would somehow express how in love I felt in these minutes or it would centre me.

-40 in the middle of the day and I was running around with my parka open and toque barely on my head enough to cover all of my ears. Yet at a moments notice, I could have just fallen down in the soft ground there, just to try to soak this up. The mist continually rose over from the open water at the river below. When I became still, that mist was the only movement. Even my own mind in these moments finally got some stillness.

Occasionally I could hear my car idle back at the highway, and when I finally ran back to it and got inside, my breathing instantly iced up the insides of the windows.

The highest the sun is getting in the sky these days.

This empty northern hemisphere

-30° today but I reached for a little bit of summer. I stretched my fingers over soft green moss and remembered how it feels to lay my head back on the moss of the forest floor months from now. The warm glow of the sunlight is never ending because the days are so short, and for seconds sometimes you can really feel the warmth still too.

"The sun never reaching far enough around the sky to melt them away."

Entire rock faces remain covered in the most fine ice crystals. The sun never reaching far enough around the sky to melt them away. Water runs from somewhere above and drips a drop at a time down the icicles. Other drops take a different path landing on a rock face and splashing down catching my face. A little bit of life. It feels nice.

All of me feels warm. My balaclava is covered in frost, and ice crystals dangle down from my fur hood. My toes are warm and cosy in thick wool socks tucked away on a sheepskin insole inside my mukluks. Only my fingers feel cold from handling my camera through my mittens. My fingers and this one small spot that runs along the side of my left hand which always has this cold, tingling feeling when I’m a little bit tired.

It’s an easy solution to warm up my fingers. Just to make a soft fist inside my mittens with my thumb tucked inside to my palms, if I could only put my camera down.

Soft summer moss in a world of winter.

Warm light gradients over a tamarack tree.