Bucket List Gets Kicked and a Few of the Town's Gems Discovered: Come Along!

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Postcards from Yellowknife and a few delights from Old Town

Last night the daughter of a German tourist launched out onto the deck above my cabin right about the time I had settled down on the gravel in my expedition-weight down to watch the sky. There was a lot of excited chatter, then she and the rest of her group hiked up to the pilot’s outlook which is above everything on this peninsula, where she took the photos I share here.

All the above images courtesy Katja Ehrenberg

My phone, even with the right settings, registered nothing. Miles and miles away,

Kristi Keller

was watching the brilliant colors and sent me a text exhorting me to get the hell outside.

Well look. First, I have to pee a lot at night, which is an advantage for watching the Northern Lights. I woke up at 11:15, looked outside and holy shit.

So I headed out, genuinely hopeful that this time I’d see colors.

My eyes don’t possess the right rods and cones to process those colors. Apparently neither does Kristi’s mother’s peepers, as she can’t see it either. We can see it on a camera, at least, and for that I’m grateful.

I’m also grateful to Katja for sending me these, which underscores that those of you who CAN see this are lucky indeed. The rest of us can only dream, even as we watch the fascinating, scintillating movements of all the fields overhead.

It’s still worth it.

I’m now into my third day in this idiosyncratic little town which the residents rightfully adore. Instead of the bright dawn we had yesterday, after a night of fireworks, clouds moved in to give us a different kind of art to enjoy.

We had pea soup all day:

The fog moved in, grounding all flights and redirecting all our activities.

Most of us wandered around in and out of galleries and shops. I found a local artist whose work instantly captured me. It was so joyful that I had to bring some home.

Robbie Craig spent slightly more than fifteen years as a teacher, largely because he wanted the flexibility. He finally realized he was living “bell to bell,” as he described it, and blowing whistles, teaching PT. He found his winding way back to his first love, art, which you can find everywhere in Old Town. After stumbling across his work in several coffee shops and galleries, I bought one of his Christmas ornaments:

Along with a few other items for gifts. Then, as is so common in this tiny town, I stumbled onto this itty bitty art gallery…

Blink and you miss it. But you gotta be curious, right?

Lo and behold, here was Robbie, along with a cabin full of his wonderful, magical art:

As with so many inspirational stories, Robbie’s tale of being disenchanted with teaching, then falling almost backwards into a successful corporate art career is charming.

He won, of all things, a telephone book cover design art contest.

Yeah well so what, you might say. Well, up here, that is a Very Big Deal. Winning the Northwestel Directory Cover Art Competition can launch your career. It did, for Robbie.

This is his winning entry:

copyright Robbie Craig

All of a sudden, Robbie’s cover art was everywhere. His appearance on the phone book cover was the opening to the corporate world. To win that contest is to potentially launch an art career with real backing rather than live out much of your life putting your pictures on local cafe walls and hoping to get discovered.

As I pinballed around the store trying to make a decision about what to buy for which wall in my house, I registered the real thread in Robbie’s career arc. Robbie got clear that being a teacher wasn’t about the joy of being a teacher. He was drawn to the scheduling freedom. But that still wasn’t the whole truth.

What he really wanted was to be an artist. He had to let go of one to be able to do the other, so he followed his heart. That led to the contest and the contest effectively springloaded his business.

I finally bit the bullet, chose a hand towel and a sticker, then bought a smallish painting based on an actual blue spruce up near Grande Prairie. Truth, I wanted a lot of his prints but had to choose. The swirling blues of the tree and the moon in that fantasy snowscape won out. It’ll be on my dining room wall in about ten days.

If you get up here, make sure you drop in. I took care of quite a few Christmas gifts with Robbie’s expressive work.

A bird’s eye view of downtown from the best perch in the area, taken by my new friend Elise

Before coming up here I had no idea there were aurora chasers and aurora forecasts. Well of course there are, silly. Why not? The forecast for tonight isn’t so good. A good night to catch up on sleep and hope for a brighter day tomorrow. Even if not there are plenty more stories to be ferreted out, with some already in play.

So….what are some gems around you that need discovering, especially on a foggy, moody day in the middle of October? I can’t wait to see what tomorrow will bring.

Let’s play.