Running into the night

Just 2 nights before the movers would come to take everything and I had the kitchen turned completely upside down. Cardboard boxes, tissue paper, kraft paper and bubble wrap were everywhere. Dishes pulled off every shelf and out of every cabinet. Total chaos.

The kitchen lights were bright and harsh overhead.

There was so much more to be taken care of, but out of nowhere and in a moment, I broke. It was like I just became paralyzed standing there in the kitchen. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t pack another dish. Everything just hit me.

All at once I became so overwhelmed with heaviness, I just dropped the packing paper I was holding onto the floor, wiped my eyes with my sleeves, grabbed my phone, flicked the kitchen light switch off and went down the stairs. I changed my nightie for not nearly warmth enough clothing still. I flung my camera bag over my shoulder, picked up my tripod and drove immediately out into the countryside.

It was the fastest and most careless I’ve ever left the house. Like I just couldn’t be another minute more there and I had to get out.

"It was like I just became paralyzed standing there in the kitchen."

The wind outside was violent. It was gusting 53km/h, but who knows how much worse it was completely open across a lake. It felt especially fitting.

As soon as I cracked the car door open, the wind would grab it and try to fling it hard back, and if I stepped out to try to stop it, the wind would just push me against the door fully extended too. The gusts easily caught me and slid me back along the ice. It howled around my parka and ruffled the fur of my hood. I felt it intensely against my body through my clothes. It was freezing, but the exact kind of raw, numbness I needed right then.

Not the end

"I needed to remind myself... This wasn't going away, not any more than it does every late spring."

---

In between so many majestic curtains, coronas overhead, in between chasing my tail being unable to put my tripod down to take a photo because it was all just too beautiful, I couldn’t fully realise that this wasn’t the end. I didn’t want it to end. I couldn’t have it be the end.

It was almost anxiety inducing. And then I realised this wasn’t about Yellowknife, this was about the aurora.
I get varying levels of this every spring, when the aurora gives way to endless daylight, but it hasn’t been this crippling maybe ever. It’s usually an emotionally, mentally, peaceful transition to the bright summer nights.
This was a surfacing fear I was giving the aurora up, but this isn’t that. Leaving a place I have for so long associated with such a deep love is not so straight forward. The aurora will be waiting for me again in the fall, and I will be there to meet her, just in a new, even more beautiful, better feeling, place.

"If there's one thing I've learned, it's that I need this as a big part of my life."

This distinction was one of the most important ones to have made. Chasing my tail holding my tripod, unable to put it down because I was too excited about the aurora in every part of the sky and feeling waves of anxiety as I prepared to leave — this was the beginning of Yellowknife for me. It was nearly every one of those 20-something trips here 10 years ago.

10 years ago, it was as much about Yellowknife as it was about the aurora.

Now it is, I feel it in my bones, now it is just about the aurora.

La bise

Passing 10am, I stepped out of the shower and leaned slowly in toward a mirror. The heaviness of my eyelids was unrelenting, and my cheeks and my nose were unusually rosy. I remembered how they hurt even under my balaclava just 8 hours earlier.

Sometimes even after a sound sleep, that end of winter, frigid day and night, full life exhaustion sets in.

"If aurora hangovers exist, I had found them."

The night before, the wind was finally slowing from the consistently 30 gusting 50km/h it had sustained for days prior. The temperature settled at -34°C. Once again cold enough for my right eye to tear single tears consistently through the night, as it always does when it is so cold. It felt so good to be wrapped up in my parka and in an indescribable warmth, not the least of which was such a magnificent twilight sky.

This is my favourite time of the year to be out with the aurora. I love it so much, and the feeling of these April nights, most definitely this one in particular, I wish I can keep forever.

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.