The longed for April

When I think of April in Yellowknife, I think of 2022. Despite my life going through total upheaval, I had a lot of favourite moments.
On a whim, the territory had technically reopened and was in it’s first weeks of allowing non-residents through it’s borders for the first time in 2 years, but it was predictably still dead.

In my final days and weeks before moving, I often retreated in the evenings to sacred places accessible only via ice roads. I spent night after night in silence under drop dead gorgeous twilight skies and auroral curtains. It was a peacefulness I hadn’t found in years.

Now back 4 years later, it was once again April and I was so excited for these nights ahead. We routinely left town with plenty of time to settle into the countryside under these gorgeous twilight skies. The lingering deep blue of twilight didn’t yet have all of the magic it would in another few days and weeks, because we were still seeing moonrise a short ways into our night. But back to the west, faint arcs of aurora faded into the oranges of sunset and it was beautiful. I savoured all of twilight and just as oranges faded off the horizon, the aurora made up for lost time the night before.

“See you in April”

Freddy initially spent the better part of a week with me back through the middle of September. It ended up being one of the most beautiful weeks of this entire aurora season, and on one of our nights out together then, I talked about how much I love April and all of the reasons why it’s my favourite time of the year for the aurora here. It was enough to convince him.

So when we said goodbye at the end of our week, I said “See you in April” and he set off to Scandinavia for a month, and I continued on into what now looks like the coldest winter in 20 something years.

After a few cloudier nights to end March, Freddy and I met up for our first of 10 nights back together again to photograph and enjoy the aurora.

On our first night, we made a slow drive out to a long time favourite location where the skies were clear and the moon was nearly full. One of my favourite things about April is how the moon, even when full, just moves lower across the horizon and it’s light isn’t the harsh, high moonlight of mid-winter. So while we did need to wait hours through softer aurora conditions at first, eventually we got just what we had been hoping for. A wonderful beginning to the end of the season.

Resetting

How do you follow up nights of such extraordinary beauty - snow that you could see was actually coloured pink and movement that you couldn’t keep up with?

I’m not really sure, actually. But I always come back to what feels like home with the aurora. Just a most genuine, heartfelt love for the whole of the experience and of the aurora herself.

It’s really easy to want to quantify what you see with a number or some kind of activity scale. I understand it, but I just… don’t like it, or I’m not interested in it, so I really just don’t.

The aurora is always beautiful, but you may not describe it always as exciting, or colourful to our eyes. But it’s beautiful, and I think I’m probably nostalgic for this simple beauty where the aurora still felt so elusive and mysterious, where I didn’t know much about it and had to travel for a day and a half to have a chance of seeing it.

Even the most static, faint arcs brought me unreasonable amounts of joy on the sides of these remote roads through Swedish forests and Norwegian fjords. I think that’s where I come back to after nights like last, and most nights, and I settle right back in to that wonder and love I’ve always, always had for her.

A little bit unexpected

I was standing in the lobby of the Chateau Nova, chatting with half my guests for the night ahead while waiting for the other half still to meet us. I was excited for the night ahead. Excited for the clear skies, I was excited to be driving out of town to a brighter twilight sky - you know how much I love this time of year, and I was excited because the aurora conditions were good. Good.

After a beautiful, but not unusual beginning of the night, I took a little time in the car to warm back up. Occasionally, I would open my door and lean half my body precariously out checking the sky behind the car. There was beginning to be a little bit of aurora that intrigued me, so I took my frozen fingers back outside and some minutes later, came back to the car to get everyone else back outside too.

And this is where I just don’t know how to describe the rest.

It is just the potential night-to-night beauty and the unexpected magic of the aurora that cannot really be predicted. I want to call it moments, but it was so much more than that. It was almost exhaustingly long that these pinks and greens danced violently for, and to such an intensity and scale that no photography, and not even some poor quality real time video I shot could give even a hint of justice to truly the kind of beauty here. It is so overwhelming, and one of these nights that are truly just unforgettable.

Joy

From the series Clarkson’s Farm, the sheer joy the cows experienced being let back into a grassy field after a winter in the barn, and Jeremy’s love of that joy, remind me so much of the times like this night.

An old friend, whom I met in Whitehorse a few years ago when he booked a daytrip with me to Kluane National Park, had now arrived in Yellowknife and before setting off on his own to explore other parts of the territory, had a night aurora chasing with me in Yellowknife first.

For his truly limitless joy photographing the beauty-sigh inducing scenery around the Yukon, it was almost nothing compared to the sheer joy of this night under the aurora.

A lot of nights, still, I feel more like the cows running freely out of the trailer back into the fields after a winter indoors, but there are a few nights where I get to take a little step back into my own bliss, be Jeremy, and just watch the overwhelming joy in others and it’s something I cherish a lot.