The blog
Paralyzing beauty
When I emailed my guests, I told them that I would like to go much earlier tonight. But I said it is taking a little bit of a risk because if we are wrong, it could be a longer night out there.
“We love an adventure so earlier is fine with us.”
So a couple hours earlier than I would normally be greeting my guests, I laughed out loud as they walked down their driveway just off the Alaska Highway. Above us, a green curtain danced.
”Yeah, a risk”, we all laughed.
Then after some minutes just admiring the perfection above, we finally jumped into the car and made our way out of town.
What a night.
“When we heard you swear, we figured this probably wasn’t normal.”
Livets ånde
The cure I know to help against grumpy days and everything just not working is long drives and the ice.
Ice froze all over the windows on a morning of -27°, and then I met the best of that in the middle of nowhere, on the centre of a lake in total silence except the deep sounds of the ice itself.
The beauty and the comfort of the ice is beyond any kind of comprehension I have. I stayed for hours walking from uncovered patch to uncovered patch in an endless and aimless wandering. The wind created such beautiful and fragile textures in the snow and the ice sang almost endlessly. It didn’t matter to me when the batteries died, I just wanted to stay out there for ever.
The bittersweet of longer days
To lose this kind of all day light hurts a little bit. It’s one of my favourite things about winter, one of the things I love the most and one of the things I strongly crave through the rest of the year.
But loss in one place leaves room for growth in another.
These already longer days move the sun further north and higher in the sky, once again reaching over the mountains and into my bedroom at sunrise. Standing at my windows and feeling the warmth and brightness of the direct sun on my face is almost cathartic.
And now, I start to dream about patio furniture, coffee outside, and growing greens on my balcony. That is not so far away, but of course, it is definitely not for the middle of February.
Guilty footsteps and repeating tire tracks
I had finally returned to Kusawa Lake for the first time since freeze up, and I was the first footprints out onto this pristine snow covered ice. A light guilt passed over me, not wanting to spoil any photos or such an undisturbed view with my footprints, as distinctively humble as the mukluk prints are. The step from the shore onto the lake was obvious to a good ear. The sound of the ice underneath my boot changed dramatically.
“It was the perfect, untouched winter landscape I would dream forever of.”
For the next couple of weeks, it seemed like I couldn’t make a decision that didn’t involve Kusawa Lake. Pristine, windswept snow was everywhere. It was the perfect, untouched winter landscape I would dream forever of.
It was the right place, on the right day, at the right time, so many times.
The true silence out here made time feel like it had stopped moving, and then I’d look at the clouds just a few hundred metres above fly by so quickly while the sunlight climbed the hills so slowly. The water still flowed effortlessly down the river while on the surface so much was completely frozen.
“There is no beauty like that of nature during the depth of winter. It is a world of extremes.”
On a night that demanded a lot of kilometres, and more trust in weather maps and weather patterns than I had experience of, we once again settled back around Kusawa Lake. The wind was fierce, but strangely comfortable at just -2°. Snow blew up in clouds across the highway and trees swayed violently in the forest. Pullout after pullout - cloud.
Still we had to wait for the clear skies to become reachable for us, but once they did, we were there and the stars and a few faint arcs of aurora in such a dramatic environment were worth all the trouble a thousandfold.
Cold fingers and a warm heart
”Is the stop sign dancing today?”
Whitehorse is often receiving these brutal winds on cloudy, stormy days. There’s a stop sign outside of my bedroom window that I often joke is dancing.
Snow blows off roofs and veins down the streets. It’s beautiful. It’s one of my happiest, simple pleasures. I could make a coffee and watch it all day. It’s the sheer beauty and power of winter from inside, from my happiest place.
Frostbite of years
My cheeks, my nose, especially my fingers. They hurt so much in the cold. Even this spring in the south, it was more painful than I could describe. The wind against my ears was almost intolerable.
For years, every cold night of too little time inside and too much time trying to take photos led to this sort of pain. For years before even that, I would spend nights outside in Yellowknife’s -40 without even a balaclava. I made the tall collar of my parka, now 12 years old, enough protection for my face somehow.
That pain was one of the things that helped me find peace in leaving Yellowknife. It was small, comparatively tiny to everything else, but it had a place on the "leaving” side of the paper all the same.
Mountain air
In this warmer weather of very recently, there have been clear nights too. Afternoons of the most amazing golden hours and sunsets have been plentiful. Low cloud catching sunset light would blow by so quickly overhead. The beauty is almost always too much.
On one of these days, I made a spontaneous and humble drive to the countryside. I knew I needed time there, I could feel that. The temperature was -7° in town, but would reach -19° when I parked, which I wasn’t dressed for. I could immediately feel the cold on my legs, face, and hands.
I was oblivious to the moonrise, but it was nearly full and up just over the mountains down the river. I explored the river ice, I watched the clouds, the colours of the sky, and listened to the water and the birds. Time almost stood still. These winter blues and passings clouds were among the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Maybe that is some nostalgia from Norway too, in these mountains. Or maybe it’s just the slow, conscious loving on nature.
While changing lenses or taking short videos on my phone, I could feel the cold wind grip my fingers and my hand. It hurt. But I kept noticing it wasn’t quite like before. It still hurt, but it’s better. It’s like my skin has started to heal. For a couple of years, it’s been painful and noticeable at every moment. But now over months, over my falling in love with the Yukon and my life here, my cheeks haven’t hurt as much, my fingers feel better outside in the cold, and the wind on my ears doesn’t make me want to crawl into the fetal position. I can enjoy the winter wind more again.
So just maybe a healing of the heart helps to heal the body too.
