Things To Do Before You Die
I don’t know about you, but I have always been intrigued by the Northern Lights. So when I was trying to come up with a special 50th birthday present for Gary, I thought that it would be the perfect opportunity to fulfil a life-long ambition to go and witness them for myself.
I had recently seen Joanna Lumley on television going to see them in Tromso, Norway, and I thought that would be a great place for us to go too. I tracked down the guide that she had used and promptly decided not to use him because he was capitalizing on his newly-acquired TV personality status and was charging twice as much as all the other guides. So I found another one and booked his services for one evening. I also secured us places on a night-time husky sled ride, which would afford us a second chance of viewing the Lights – very romantic, huddled under a reindeer fur crossing the Lyngen Alps beneath the stars.
Well, the reality did not disappoint, although it was not exactly as I had imagined. On out first night in Tromso, we and four other couples went out with our guide, northern Lights chasing. All the guides are in communication with each other, so that everyone can enjoy the spectacle, even driving up to Finland, if necessary. We had dressed for the occasion, which was just as well, because the temperature was about -20 degrees C. But that just didn’t matter, once the eerie green swirls of ghostly light started to emerge and dance across the skies.
I’m afraid that my preparation for photographing the display for posterity were sadly lacking. For starters, it was far too cold to remove my gloves to operate my camera’s controls and secondly, my tripod was far from up to the job. I took a few shaky shots, but in the end I had to surrender to the awesomeness (in the true sense of the word) of the light show unfolding around us, and just enjoy it. Now as luck would have it, we had a professional photographer in our number, who was very well prepared and who very graciously let the rest of us have copies of some of her breath-taking shots.
On our second night, we drove up to the Lyngen Alps for our husky adventure. Even colder than the previous night, our hosts provided us with super-toasty jumpsuits to wear over the top of all our other layers. So, we set out in a procession of sleds – each with a driver and a passenger and a team of four huskies. So far so good. By the way, no sign of the Lights yet. So Gary took to the helm of our sled first for the first (easier) half of our 5km trek. Within three seconds the sled overturned and everyone had to stop. Once we were righted and moving again, Gary informed me that he couldn’t see anything because his glasses had misted up and frozen! So, I had to shout instructions back to him about when he should duck to avoid branches, stop and suchlike – nightmare!
Come the halfway mark, he was only too happy to hand over the metaphorical reins to me (although it was the passenger who actually held the real reins). So the driver has to stand behind the passenger with one foot on each of the runners, hanging on for dear life and is responsible for braking. Now we were warned that sometimes the gradient would be too steep for the huskies to manage, without the driver hopping off and jumping on again, once they got going. Well, the inevitable happened – I just could not get on again in time and my sled disappeared into the night, leaving my spread-eagled in the snow! The thing is, we were not the last in line. So, despite the best efforts of the sled-driver following us, who could see, I was overrun by his huskies, but luckily not the sled!
Nevertheless, in spite of having been subsequently thrown off my sled at speed, descending a slope, we did make it to the end of the run, having loved every minute of it! We all then hugged mugs of steaming soup in a traditional Sami tent, sitting around a crackling open fire. When we later re-emerged into the night, we were greeted by the most spectacular display of emerald green Northern Lights – the perfect end to the night.
This experience was altogether magical and moving – something that everyone should put on their bucket list.