The comforts of April

I was very much in love with my April nights routine by now. Walking out of the house to the car in a crisp but reasonable, after this winter, air temperature while the sky was a beautiful bright twilight felt so reassuring and comfortable. Each night now was 6 minutes shorter than the last, but we weren’t making a habit of leaving town any later. I was loving every moment of these nights and I knew I would miss them so much, which made savouring every last moment so much more essential.

The end of my season was just a few tours away now and that provided some relief after such a long, exhausting season and first year of just life back in Yellowknife. In a stark contrast to feeling like this last year was an onslaught of chaos and messiness in my life, these final nights carried such a calm. I couldn’t wait for them to begin, and I didn’t want them to end. There wasn’t a worry about tomorrow, except about what I was going to bake, or when my next night off will be. I just wanted to live in the endless beauty of these nights forever.

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A mess of excitement

It was early in the night after another warming April day. Temperatures would again reach for close to -20 overnight, but we were barely -10 by the time we parked, and after this winter, that may as well have been Mexico to me.

So after a much shorter than anticipated drive from town, we did stop just off the side of the highway to mostly clear sky before a threatening cloud bank in the distance. From the car, we scurried away and down a short path to our waiting aurora.
In a mess of excitement, running from side to side, camera bags and clothing quickly became strewn across the snow covering the frozen pond we had set up on.

Fleeting moments of calm allowed us, or me at least, to catch our (my) breath before another wave of spectacular colour and dance lifted overhead. The magic once again felt endless and overwhelming.

Then finally, as auroral activity waned, and parkas were reclaimed from the snow, we very slowly packed our tripods and cameras away leaving just my binoculars set up focused to the moonrise on the horizon. We waited patiently for the most gorgeous view of it before eventually making our short drive back to town after another, literally, breathtaking night.

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.