The heart of the aurora chase

The optimistic realist

I always want to see the aurora, I just love seeing her. Every night. I want to see those most amazing displays. I love the colours, I love the movement and the scale of the aurora. It’s never the same, and it is never assured - not at any intensity, not for any duration. You cannot rely on the weather to be perfect, or the forecasting to be perfect. Maybe the clear sky on the map has passed or changed already from the information we can see.

In any moment, there can be endless decisions to make. That uncertainty forces you to slow down and to be in the present moment.

"For me, chasing the aurora is not about waiting on any one perfect night. It's about everything else around it as well. It's driving for hours, spending time in nature, and just being in that raw environment. It's just different from anything else."

So on a night where I’ve planned to leave very late to try to align as best as possible into challenging aurora conditions and challenging weather conditions, I feel an almost heightened sensitivity to everything else that is around the aurora chase as well.

Feeling the gusts of winds on the car across open sections of highway, scanning the sides of the highways for elk and all others, and keeping an eye for any stars demands that kind of heightened sensitivity. It is a stress, but it’s also a beautiful, unique awareness in a life that is a far cry from ordinary.

Leaving town, low cloud persisted for more than 150 kilometres with intermittent rain storms hitting us all along the way to an area I thought we might have a chance.

Every so often we’d stop, stretch our legs, breathe the sweet forest air at highway pull-outs and look up for any stars. There were still only raindrops and almost painful gusts of wind.

Then after many kilometres more, a few stars broke through small holes in the clouds until the sky became more stars than clouds. At first, the aurora was gentle, barely visible with the naked eye. Hours passed, and in the end it was the exact experience I love the most with the aurora. It was like the really good old, old days from Norway. Mountains, volatile weather, a successful chase, and the most beautiful aurora and happy feeling deep inside that almost couldn’t be contained.

Transitions

Waiting for the snow

Yesterday was the first day since I moved in that I didn’t see the mountains from my sofa, and today is the most beautiful they have ever looked.

Our first snow arrived in a true winter storm, and I was in love with every moment of that. It was like being wrapped up in every creature comfort again... Blustery winds, heavy snowfall, silence around the neighbourhood and such cosy winter clothing. The longer nights, late sunrises, and the intensity of blue hour when there is only snow everywhere have returned again after what felt like an eternity. My soul couldn’t be happier.

Everyone’s favourite few weeks

For the weeks and weeks before, I couldn’t spend enough time outside. The colours and crisp air but still warm sun pulled me out. Familiarity with the countryside felt less like a chore and more like a consequence. Entire mountainsides were covered in reds, oranges and yellows, and I constantly thought I had never been in a place more beautiful. I wondered passing other vehicles along the highways, “Do they know how beautiful this is? Are they seeing this too?”. I wanted to pull over every 100m and breathe heavy breaths at the beauty.

Hitting the ground crawling

Exhausted and almost home

My first night in Whitehorse at a lodge outside the city, the day before I would close on my apartment, was a great opportunity to see the aurora. One thing I did know about the aurora in Whitehorse, from simple math and physics (there’s no such thing), is that the peak time would typically be very, very late. And I was far too exhausted trying to tie together everything needed to close on my apartment the next day to keep myself up so late. But early enough for me to see it, with the sky barely dark enough, the aurora arced faintly over the mountains anyway.
And that felt really, really, good.

Home

The next night in a very empty apartment that was now mine, I looked over construction debris and a gorgeous new neighbourhood, to again the aurora dancing over the mountains. After all, a good part of choosing the exact apartment I did was my expectation of the aurora here.

I felt like the luckiest person in the world, but without any knowledge of how common this perfect weather and auroral activity was. But for the moment, it was all I needed.

For nights more since, I’ve watched the aurora dance from my bed.

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"It was frustrating almost to tears."

Daytime drives out along the highways were exhausting. Exploring every side road, every driveway, poking around any exit off the highway in search of quiet locations with good views felt never ending and far from rewarding. A map littered with dots and notes to mark my discoveries is a much better idea on paper than it is practical.

Truly the only way this situation was going to get any better, or comfortable at all, was through forced experience. Something that was even more uncomfortable than just the raw uncomfortableness of such a big change in the first place.

Then on a night with extraordinary auroral activity, I decided I would try a new highway I hadn’t yet been out to, not even in the daytime. I hadn’t even looked closely at the highway on a map or Google Earth to get a sense of side roads of highway pullouts. This was, unsurprisingly, not the happiest night of my life.

I drove through the best minutes of the aurora, over and over again, totally unaware of where I was and what was around me. It was one of the most frustrating few hours of my life, before I left the aurora in the middle of her show to turn around and just come straight home. It was frustrating almost to tears.

The Long Road

Decorating blind, again

Now sitting in Scotiabank’s my little apartment, I have owned exactly 2 homes in my 35 years. Both of them I bought sight unseen, from several thousand kilometres away. So wandering the showrooms and marketplace at IKEA, and burning my fingertips on my phone screen from spending so much time in their app, to furnish a place I hadn’t actually seen, wasn’t new or particularly surprising. It was in a way my bliss, and I loved every second of it.

Finding space for all of that love and bliss in a little Ford Escape wasn’t the most straight forward task. I knew in a worst case scenario, I could just ship up a few boxes and that wouldn’t be the end of the world. But I didn’t need to save any space for anything, it didn’t matter how ridiculous the inside of my car looked. There aren’t any prizes for unused space, so I may as well just try to take it all. I unpacked individual IKEA items to save on space and weight. I stuffed clothes into lampshades. I padded the back window with pillows to keep a floor mirror and ceiling track light from going through it on acceleration and bumps. Plants were boxed up in bunches and stacked. It was the culmination of nearly a decade of playing tetris with suitcases at YVR.

A few highways bumps made me bite my lip hard and turn my head back at my porcelain bathroom sink, as if I could see it, wondering if I had just rendered it useless. But thankfully not. Not that I was ever driving very fast anyway. I had litres per hundred records to set.

"There aren't any prizes for unused space, so I may as well just try to take it all."

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Beauty anxiety and cosy nights

Long drives soothe me. They aren’t a chore, they’ve never felt like a thorn in my side or something I just needed to get over with. They’re one of the best parts of life, and in my dream car, going up through one of the most beautiful places in the world, it was something I was more than ready to enjoy every second of. I just wish there were more McDonald’s for their baked apple pies and black coffee.

So more than 9 weeks behind schedule, it was finally departure day for the Yukon after a multiple-time extended summer in BC. Hotels were booked, cancelled, and re-booked. It was a running joke in my mum’s house that every conversation we had about how my apartment is coming along in Whitehorse, the year of completion got exponentially more ridiculous.

"Don't you go falling in love with my ZZ plant now, because I'm taking it with me when I leave here in 2054."

But now I was staring down another 2,200 kilometres, a distance I’d been used to doing straight through. I would this time spread it out over 3 days. 8 hour drives easily became 14 hour days between coffee breaks, emergency photo stops, drone launches, and deep breaths in the sweet forest air.

The weather changed often and dramatically. Golden hour light took my breath away, touching the very tops of trees or peaks of mountains. Blue hour felt never ending and never more beautiful. It was the best of summer, every moment of it. The beauty was almost too much for my chest.

Pain from the north

The wind here is unrelenting. It’s magical on those 30° summer nights, but that seems a world away still. For now, it remains painful on my hands and ears. A reminder of the north.

Walks through a hilly neighbourhood and up into the mountains gives a little peace to my mind, and the opportunity for endless nose sniffling out loud. I stop at a backyard to give the most beautiful cat some love through it’s fence. And then cross the steps into the nature trails, passing the sign that warns of rattlesnakes. I hate snakes.

The skies here never stay the same. Sunset and twilight over the mountains feels so magical. It’s an intense feeling. The sunset kept changing to become more and more beautiful. For only minutes, low fast moving clouds would light up in pink sunlight against varying depths of blues, and then so quickly those clouds lost their pink. It was magic.

I was taking the same photo over and over again, convinced each one was the most beautiful. These are good evenings, but I can’t wait until it’s truly warm and my ears don’t hurt in the wind.