Tales of the beautiful everyday from the North
A little more Icelandic weather induced chaos
The beginning of the night was all a little bit of a panic. A passing cloud bank was just leaving us, and the aurora was already teasing us. We found somewhere to pull over quickly, and by 10pm, we were already under what would be the most beautiful aurora of the night.
When we had moved further into the countryside later in the night and out onto a frozen lake, no time was wasted getting reacquainted with the Icelandic winds still present from the night earlier. The ice roads were a mess. Snow drifts reached far and wide, and my already low to the ground Toyota Sienna did, by design, a little bit of light snow plowing to further us from shore.
The wind once again went right through my toque, numbing my forehead, and I tried not to face the wind head on for too long. We often took cover in the car, but it was hard to resist the dead quiet of the frozen lake with just the soft idling of the car muffled by the wind howling around my hood.
Snow drifts, blurry trees, and fallen tripods
The annual Iceland on Highway 3 night
After almost 90 kilometres from town, we arrived to a secluded driveway, that, by all indications earlier in the night, was our best chance.
And it was dead cloudy. All 90 kilometres - not one star. Just snow drifts creeping out from the highway edges toward the centre line and constant blowing snow. It very much was my beloved annual Icelandic weather night.
Without much hesitation, we hunkered down in the car, occasionally throwing our heads out the window up at the sky to check for stars. Then after about an hour had passed, stars began to appear. Just a few at first, and sparking very cautious optimism, but it wasn’t long before more and more of the sky opened up.
The aurora was gentle, although it became clear quite quickly we were seeing things move in the right direction, and then it was just magic.
Tripods continued to be toppled and the aurora continued to dance. The wind, gusting 64km/h, blurred trees in the foregrounds of our photos and actively hurt my forehead with it’s cold - even through my thickest wool toque. It was brutal, but inside I did just love it so much, and I enjoyed the beauty of every last vein of blowing snow across highway for all 90 kilometres back home.
The nights that pass too fast
The aurora was quiet, still gentle, when we arrived out onto our frozen lake for the night, but that quiet wouldn’t be for long.
Clouds were threatening from the west, but this was still far from an immediate concern.
Inside, I was already the happiest. Frozen lakes, ice roads, and the aurora. Everything I so feared losing forever back in April 2022, I had again, and the comfort and homeyness of the ice singing below us all night was something I’m not sure anyone else could ever understand.
I felt reconnected with a love that I discovered and felt grow with every year in Yellowknife. But it was more than just the ice, it was the shorelines, the tree lines, and as close as we have to mountainscapes here, and then the virtual ease with which the aurora just danced above all of that. It’s really the magic of Yellowknife, and this night felt like full circle from that one night in particular back in April of 2022 just before I moved away that produced so much heartbreak.
Returning after 10 years
It was a breathtaking night, really truly breathtaking.
We waited many hours through quiet conditions and cold, but not extremely uncomfortable, temperatures. We were just barely into the -30s, which we’ve been for weeks now, and I’m well adjusted after my yearly fall anxiety about winter winter.
It’s so difficult sometimes to write about nights like this.
There’s a gentle contentment but overwhelming perfection here. It’s in the company of my guests who returned after their first visit 10 years earlier, a quiet location away from everyone else, so much patience and then this beautiful show all around us of colour and movement that you cannot imagine until you are under it.
Repeatedly testing our luck
“…there’s rarely a better feeling than being at the right place at the right time.”
Through the middle of December, we had nights and nights of close calls with cloud banks. Sometimes arriving into clearing skies at just the right moment to meet a waiting aurora. Other nights, we hung on to clear sky as long as we could, hoping the aurora would join us before we were eaten up by cloud.
This really is all at the heart of aurora chasing for me, and there’s rarely a better feeling than being at the right place at the right time.
