Another weekend of stollen, ice roads, and the magic valley

Two and a half months since our last visit and it felt like a lifetime of change in between.

"I feel like you've turned a corner, in more ways than one."

Some of the very best, the most raw and deep in my heart moments over the last 7 years here were birthed in the just days between cross country flights at ungodly hours inclusive the misery of 6 hours on Q400s. The winter walk with glühwein, the Zehabesha takeaway nights, the hysterical laughter and genuine weirdness that only two of the closest friends share, and endless, endless tea and coffee consumption.

A few aurora chases and new-to-us-both ice road drives with sweets and coffees made it all too perfect.

Besties.

The magic valley

In a race against time, driving… a little bit quickly… over the last stretch of ice road, I just repeated in my mind “Please, please please. Just a few minutes more.”

I was, of course, speaking directly to the aurora. Begging and wishing for just a little more time before she would dance. It was not a question of if, but when. And it felt strongly like it was an any second thing now.

For the last few minutes driving, I watched my odometer more than I watched the road ahead of me, waiting for the perfect addition of numbers to signal where my turn needed to be.
I could have stopped at any moment, but I wanted so badly to disappear into this little 'valley’. It is my favourite place to photograph the aurora here, but it has been years since I’ve been there.

When I pulled over just where I wanted to be, I didn’t hesitate for a moment in stepping outside. The exterior lights were already in the off position, and as soon as I placed the car in park, they all went dark. I didn’t bother with the interior lights. I just took my camera and tripod, and half zipped up parka outside into the -37° and looked up.

I think before I even shut my car door behind me, I spoke a soft “wooww” out loud, to just myself. The Milky Way and entire moonless sky of stars all around the silhouettes of the mountains was literally breathtaking.

Just some short moments passed, just enough time to extend my tripod legs. And then it was the beginning of hours of the aurora dancing all across the sky. I am sure she was far in the south this night, and just maybe I had her ear.

A heavy heart

I came to Yellowknife for the first time on 25 February 2011. I had chosen Yellowknife because it was the northern most destination on WestJet’s route map. When our plane touched down in Yellowknife and taxied to the terminal, veins of snow blew violently but beautifully across the taxiways beneath us. The sky was overcast.

Both of the next two nights, we walked some metres out from behind our B&B, and watched the northern lights dance.

By the end of that two nights and three days, I wanted to move here. A for sale sign was in front of a condo across from the B&B where we were staying. I looked it up, and the price was more than triple what I was expecting. I felt disappointed, but in a way indifferent over it.

Four years and three months later, I did move here, but two years later than I had planned, and in a completely different life.

Hidden in plain sight

Just a handful of people know this story, and even fewer the raw depth of it, but in 2013 with my then girlfriend, we had made a deposit on a half duplex in Yellowknife. We got to make small changes in the design and choose our finishes. On one of our dozen or two trips to Yellowknife over a few years, we walked to visit the site where we would build.

"It is my most painful heartbreak and my biggest regret."

We stood at the edge of our soon to be home, but for now barren and snow covered lot, when our future neighbours of the duplex which was already built next door arrived home. We introduced ourselves and chatted for some time. They warmly invited us, total strangers, back later in the evening for a cosy visit with tea and cake when they could show us around their place, which was designed and constructed by the same builder we were with. It was a beautiful evening, and we vowed to stay in touch.

Then just months later, hearts were broken and lives were in total upheaval. It is my most painful heartbreak and my biggest regret.
Our relationship ended, and with it, our Yellowknife dream.

Some one and a half years later, I had reflected enough to know I needed to go back to Iceland to find both peace and closure. In the back of my mind was Yellowknife, but I knew I needed to take care of my heart first.

Now back home, I was fully tunnel visioning on Yellowknife. I partnered with the same builders as before to build new, but for months we stalled over finding a suitable lot to build on. There finally came a time I needed to have a decision if we were going to be able to build, or if I would begin searching to buy on the market.

In the end, the project couldn’t go ahead, but in less than 48 hours from that decision, the just 3 year old duplex I was supposed to be living beside, was now listed as for sale.

I called the listing realtor, offered the asking, and bought the home from 2,300km and two provinces away. The family we had tea and cake with a couple years earlier, were now my shared wall neighbours. And immediately on my other side, the very house which was almost ours, that has our fingerprints all over it.

It was in a way a full circle and one of the most surreal things I’ve ever lived.

“You need some green!”

Those shared wall neighbours, before they sold some years ago to move back to Sweden, and before I had any houseplants, left me with their aloe plant. The planter and saucer stick out like a sore thumb in my decor, and now I love that so much. It’s still thriving, in it’s original pot, sitting on it’s mismatched saucer. It’s one of those things in someone’s home that feels so out of place—that you feel it in your bones—there must be a beautiful story buried away in there somewhere.

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A broken soul

This is the part I don’t know how to write. Every time I begin, it leads to the same place; a dark place I don’t want to go back to. I don’t even want to say it, but you know what it is. Over the last two years, I have woken up countless nights in cold sweats. For hours unable to self soothe or come back to relaxed breathing. I have been in tears so many times.

“I don’t think I want to come back here.”

The last two years in the Northwest Territories has torn me apart—my life and my soul. It has killed the part of my soul that was head over heels in love with this place, that couldn’t imagine leaving, and was so in love with this life. It’s taken me this whole two years through single weeks, months, sometimes just days by day and hours by hour, to kind of deal with this and come to terms with it.

I need to move on and to rebuild—financially, emotionally and mentally.

And I think the end just kind of comes at a perfect time when I’m ready to kind of make the next steps that I need to make, to leave my feelings of this territory behind and hopefully leave my broken life behind.

I can begin to sense a certain peace in me.

Maybe the best times of the last two years for me has been the hours spent just listening to the singing ice.

60.72°N

I am leaving Yellowknife, and I’m moving to Whitehorse, Yukon. This spring marks the end for me here.

Beginning in August, I will continue chasing the aurora as my career in my new home of Whitehorse, with such cosy small groups as ever. I want to keep the core of my business just as it’s always been.

In a way, this is so nostalgic for me. It’s the warmer, more dynamic weather and expansive highway infrastructure leading to real aurora chases through mountain scenery and cloud fronts. It feels so much like where I ‘grew up’ chasing the aurora in northern Norway, and I’m just so excited and so nervous to hit the ground there and to begin again. I really, really hope you just might come with me on this journey too.

Somber moments and simple joys

I never expected to see these little cedar waxwings playing around my house this morning, technically the afternoon. I still had my coffee in my hand, so it was morning to me.

After so many of them flew around my dining window and caught my eye as I sat at the dining table, I stood at the window looking a few metres down to one of the trees I planted years ago where dozens of these birds stayed for some moments. I just stood watching them, sipping my coffee and smiling like it was the first time I had ever seen anything so beautiful. It was deeply surreal.

"Cedar waxwings are a really special bird for me, one that represents a lot of love, but that's more a story not for this blog, at least not now."

There was just one other time I had seen them here in Yellowknife and it was not anywhere near the middle of winter like we are in now. This felt extra special and like I could not miss them, and like this was not just a coincidence.

The forever northern sunset

Just a few hours later, the sunset snuck beautifully up on me. The low grey overcast sky of the entire day was glowing orange as light flurries still fell. This forever sunset is one of my favourite things about the north. From the sky, the horizon faded into a misty snowfall far in the distance and all around the snow was reflecting pink. Cotton candy clouds circled the entire sky.

Tea, dinner, and tea

Back home, just the simple joys of too-hot-to-drink tea, candlesticks, and some writing carried me well to dinner. I didn’t even make it through a full episode of The Great Pottery Throw Down before I was messy pouring tea into my thermos and changing in a hurry.

Tonight as I began tipping the teapot spout down toward my mug, I stopped myself and ran back toward the living room bringing AuroraMax up on my phone. It was instantly clear there wouldn’t be time to sit down with a cup of tea, so back in the kitchen, I poured straight into my thermos for the road.

Tea waterfall down the side of a mug and all over the counter successfully averted.

As the aurora lowered back into the northern horizon, I retreated back to the car where two slices of stollen were waiting. I really did bring them out with me on a plate with a fork, and despite driving hurriedly out, not a speck of powdered sugar was spilled over the plate’s edge. The car smelled strongly of lavender cream earl grey tea. A shimmering, pink lined arc of the northern lights danced straight out the front windshield.

The aurora quieted quickly down, and before I left for home, I laid out on an area of the ice not far from the car where I cleared the snow away. It’s hard to say how long I stayed this way, staring straight up. The aurora had cleared of the sky overhead, but I would occasionally catch faint streaks of her in my peripheral vision just as I would catch the faintest sound of Look After You, left playing quietly on repeat, when the engine would switch to battery and there was no other sound.

A night of chaotic serenity

It was a few minutes after 5 in the evening and I leaned up against a north facing window. Yesterday the moonrise was in perfect time with the Belt of Venus. Tonight, the sky was again completely clear, now a deep blue still from twilight, and I felt some sadness in that. I guess you could say twilight lingering past 5pm begins to feel more normal, and what I love so much in the north is the forever darkness and even the forever daylight on the opposite side.

Still, the trees looked so beautiful covered in snow and the sky such a rich colour blue. Some stars were visible, and a few streaks of aurora too. That is not necessarily normal, to see the aurora so early, but it is not the first time also. Maybe a good sign for later.

“It was fine, until it wasn’t.”

A short time later I was just settling in for the night, at least for the next few hours.

The aurora was still arcing over my house, but the Canuck game was just a few minutes in and I was really ready to just crash, zone completely out. I had dinner all cleaned up, lighted candles in all my Kähler houses, and I was lying sideways across my sofa with my untouched, still steaming tea, on the sofa arm. A light headache lingered in the background.

After the hockey game, I would take a hot bath, unless the aurora was so good that I would feel anxiety (it’s a real thing with me) about missing being out with it. But all that was a situation for later. I felt fine in my decision to let go of chasing an early show and instead re-evaluate in a few hours. It was fine, until it wasn’t.

"I guess you could say twilight lingering past 5pm begins to feel more normal..."

My feeling of ‘wait and see for later’ developed overwhelmingly into not a great feeling, and I really had no choice but to take the decision to run down the stairs, grab my keys to remote start my car, and get changed. I once again messy poured my tea from my mug back into the teapot, and then into my thermos. I had reached such a panic to get out the door that I didn’t even let my car warm up for at least 15 minutes, and it was already -40.

It wasn’t until I was down the hill outside my neighbourhood that I had realized I forgot my tripod back inside my front door. So after an almost immediate u-turn and a swing back up my street, I was now on my way out, to chase the early aurora after all.

In the end, initially forgotten tripod and all, it was perfect timing.

When I walked back in my front door just before 8pm, I first just dropped my parka to the floor against the front door, but did hang it up on second thought. There is nothing worse than putting back on a freezing cold parka if I decided to go back out later.

I laughed to myself as I looked back at this chaos, walking up the stairs in just my base layers now. I’m not usually this dramatic.

So, back home and I warm up another mug of lavender cream earl grey tea. I sink back into my sofa catching the last period of the Canuck game. Usually the aurora cycles every few hours, so I knew I had a little time even if I wanted to go back out. I re-lit my candles from earlier and opened up my MacBook, actually starting to write this post. It was still before 9pm, and I kept an eye on the windows of course.

I think I knew, aided by data as ever, pretty much right away that I was going to be going back out. But the little curl up on the sofa in between, with not quite enough time to write all of this, was just what I needed. The whole night was.

When you get back home and just can’t even anymore.