Someone said: I’d love to see the Aurora Borealis, commonly known as the northern lights. These are caused by solar storms or flares and coronal mass ejections which interact with the earth’s magnetic field causing these colourful displays of celestial phantasmagoria. Sounded great. Who wouldn’t want to see this natural light show? 

When is the best time to see this? Not in the winter when it’s dark for twenty-three and a half hours. Not in the summer when it never gets dark. Not in the fall when it’s still nice and temperate, even in the Yukon. ‘No, it’s best in the middle of March, just before breakup,’ someone said. Who is breaking up? Nobody. It’s the time when the ice and snow melts and the rivers groan and heave when they break into large chunks of deadly ice, jamming and damming along the banks, under the bridges and also taking away the ice roads which connect the two shores of the Yukon and the Klondike rivers during the winter months. We wanted to be there before that happened. We agreed on the first week of March as the time when all of us would be around (some of us spend the winters in the sun) and before the gardens needed attention. Temps should be wintry but not too cold and the skies would be clear.