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Neighbourhood love
The outskirts of summer
Northern springs begin with me freezing in the morning sunshine on my patio with a cup of coffee that cools too quickly. 3°, sunshine, and no wind are the perfect early April mornings. But any wind, or passing clouds and I cower back under a throw.
The temperatures are slow to work their way above 0°, but the northern sun is strong. My seedlings were happy scattered around on windowsills, chasing the sun from the east windows over to the west. It was weeks around these windowsills, and then half days outside before nights back inside, and eventually they were set free outside to mature where still they grow.
Day length continued to grow and the temperatures too. As often as I was out driving through the night chasing midnight twilight skies, I would walk my beautiful neighbourhood and every forest trail I could find.
The snow eventually gave way to the flora of the forest floor, and the ice gave back the teal water views. Lupines sprung up all through the forest, and every day I thought the forests could never look more beautiful than the day before. Summer was a long way away but the forests were already magical beyond anything I had known before. They were my favourite place to be and I could not get enough.
More than just a starvation of my senses through winter, this was pure magic. It was all life returning. It was a world reawakening.
Sunset by sunset, summer has been coming to an end. Tonight felt like the last true summer night. The forecast ahead finally cools down from the consistently high 20s. The nights will reach closer to freezing and I will dance on the grave of every last mosquito. But tonight the wind was gusty and still warm, blowing the fragrant scent of white sweet clover, something I will long for and struggle to imagine in another half year.
The berries in the forest are now just beginning and will keep me busy into November. These early lingonberries bring me happiness beyond your wildest imagination. Soon my freezer will be full with them, but for now my palms are, walk after walk, night after night.
With longer nights, the treats of winter return. The evenings around the neighbourhood quiet down earlier and dramatic skies keep me on my toes, literally, running from one side of my apartment to the other.
Some late, late moments before bed, and before I wrap up the patio furniture for the winter, are spent out on the patio in still comfortable temperatures and in the best company of all.
The days of dim lighting and cosy darker nights are returning and I’m ready. But I’ll miss this a lot, and all the slow, friendly interactions with neighbours everywhere. I love this place more than a love I have ever known.
Joyfully into the darkness
The first week or two of tours after the summer always have a surreal feeling. They are the first drives where again the highways are dark and headlights become automatic. It feels strange and looks unfamiliar. The love of these dark nights, clear sky chases, and mystery around the aurora all come rushing back at once and it is an overwhelming love.
For long periods these first few nights, distant loons, a few passing clouds and the autumn Milky Way were our best company. Faint arcs of aurora appeared, disappeared, and reappeared low on the horizon to the discerning eye. But for now, we reacquainted ourselves with some other heavenly wonders, like the Andromeda Galaxy among others.
Long, late nights into twilight before sunrise appeared assured from the beginning.
Finally, as twilight emerged in the northeast, out of nowhere, curtains of purple and green lit up the sky. After hours of a steady, gentle arc across the north, it was chaos - the absolute best kind.
“What do you call that? Piano keys?”
For more than an hour, the aurora danced over half of the sky, piano keys and all. The relief, joy, excitement and wonder in myself must have for sure been palpable. There couldn’t have been a better way to end my first few nights of the season.
It’s just so good to have her back.
The meandering drive back north
“Sometimes the absence of options leads to the best one of all.”
After our horizontal migration from Calgary to Kamloops, I think it was the evening before we were leaving to start our more leisurely drive back home and Stewart, BC wasn’t even really on our radar.
We were getting a little desperate at this point and had resorted to massive physical maps, like the ones from CAA. Where we wanted to end up around at the end of our first day driving back just felt like a dead zone. Smithers was too close and just about anything further north than that may as well have been an entirely additional day of driving. Hotels were sparse and our ability to make a decision was even more rare.
Then we circled back to Stewart on the map, and sure it was a little bit out of the way, but after reading rumours of glacier views from the highway and bears basically outnumbering humans, we found a charming hotel with crooked, creaky floors and amazing views and booked it.
That was probably my favourite decision from the entire trip.
On the highway in, the winds were wildly strong but the air so warm and sweet. We travelled right through golden hour, and you can only imagine how breathtaking that light was cast over the mountain peaks towering up from either side of the highway. We did see bears, as promised, and as much as I wanted to spend the rest of the little remaining daylight sitting in front of glaciers, we resigned ourselves to tea and treats in our cosy little room at the Bayview Hotel.
Our final couple days on the road were spent soaking in and soaking up Northern BC. Every time we passed the Liard Hot Springs, we spent some hours there, again dreaming of returning in the middle of winter. We found cosy accommodation in Muncho Lake Provincial Park, and wandered around the mountains and the most teal lakes I’ve ever seen. By the time we parked back home, we had done 6,141.4 kilometres in a week and a half and were ready to do it again in a heartbeat.
The annual road trip south
24 hour drives through the bright nights of northern summers have, over the last 8 years, become one of my favourite things in the world. Hotels never felt necessary because I could sleep just when I felt tired, which was rarely ever. I loved all the light, open space, and total freedom way too much.
This year was the same, but different. There was so much to see, so many places to stop. So many mountains, so many lakes, and so much wildlife. So we included an overnight in Fort St. John on the way down.
Our departure was not set in stone, but at 3:30 in the morning, all that remained was wrapping up a couple stollen along with other baking from the night before, re-warming our non-alcoholic Glühwein, and taking our blue IKEA bag full of snacks and goodies out to the car.
The sky was already bright, and although we weren’t driving all the way through in one day, we were still staring down a 1,300 kilometre day one, which we expectantly turned into an 18 hour day with truly dozens of wildlife sightings and goodness knows how many other photo and coffee stops. Some stops we planned, like Rancheria Falls and the Liard Hot Springs, but far more were spontaneous requiring u-turns more often than not. If we weren’t careful, we would have spent more hours in the shoulders off the side of the Alaska Highway watching bears, caribou, dozens or hundreds of bison, mountain goats and moose than we would have actually driving.
“Oh my god, oh my god, I’ll call you back! Baby bears!”
Nearing the end of day one, about halfway between Fort Nelson and Fort St. John, we were on the phone to my mum when I stopped her mid sentence with a dramatic “Oh my god, oh my god, I’ll call you back! Baby bears!”
It was what we had wished to see since we left this morning, and at the side of the highway, a mama bear and her three cubs. We pulled way off into the shoulder and just watched, photographed, and took video. It was the best.
Asking the real questions — IKEA or the Icefields Parkway
At breakfast in our hotel at the beginning of day two, we still had not decided on our route to Calgary. A far more direct route via Edmonton that would include a convenient lunch stop/shop with better stock availability than Calgary, or a several hour detour through a mostly smoky Icefields Parkway. We were never going to have all the time we wanted for the Icefields Parkway this time, plus we hate summer, so we knew we’d be back eventually anyway. But in the end, we decided on the Icefields Parkway and it was more beautiful than I had remembered, and a quick Click & Collect order from IKEA Calgary to secure the lowest stock items made this the right decision for sure.
Sunset in Calgary at last
I can’t stop
Another perfect evening of slow driving along gravel roads, cautious walks along the river and flights out over thawing lakes.
“Every time feels like the first time.”
And I can’t stop. It’s like an addition, and every time feels like the first time. I can take the same flight paths over and over and never get tired of it. I am never uninterested.
Absolute stillness in the air
A silence not often understood can be hard to hear
Wildlife in their own world
Golden hour, sunset, and the northern twilight ever changing
This is just the most beautiful place and it just is my happiest place.
