I’ve seen the Aurora Borealis before, but what I learned at Churchill made the Northern Lights even more magical

Bordered in neon green and purple, the Northern Lights flashed and rippled across the sky. I struggled for words and caught a thought that flashed through my mind: The lights looked like they had ripped open the sky, offering a glimpse of what lay beyond.

It was an imaginative thought, but in the face of such a spectacle, only such explanations felt appropriate. A fellow passenger standing next to me made his own observation: “It’s like fingers playing with the hearts of the earth.”

I went with Frontiers North Adventures on their Northern Lights Photography Tour to Churchill, Man. traveled, which takes visitors to various locations in the subarctic city in search of the aurora. On that cold winter night I was in a cozy log cabin, the base camp of Wapusk Adventures. Métis’ own tour company was chosen for its remote location (the darkness is ideal for aurora viewing) and tipi, which makes for a photogenic foreground.

Before Churchill, I had mostly seen the Northern Lights by accident. I had always liked that they were something unknowable and unpredictable – for me those were the qualities that made the experience of seeing them particularly awe-inspiring.

So I had arrived on this journey with some trepidation, fearing that visiting a place with the expectation of seeing the lights in the first place might lessen my fascination.

But Churchill, it turned out, was not just a spectacle out of heaven; it also deepened my experience of it.

The lights over Wapusk danced in the sky for so long that my esoteric interpretation of the phenomenon felt inadequate. By just focusing on the aesthetic, I wondered if I was missing something.

I thought back to the Manitoba Museum Planetarium in Winnipeg, where a few days earlier I had seen a presentation on the science behind the aurora. “It’s more than just pretty lights,” said my guide, Ward Cameron.

The Aurora Borealis is caused by solar storms on the Sun’s surface that emit clouds of electrically charged particles, which are then captured by Earth’s magnetic field and travel to the magnetic poles. The charged particles react with gases in our atmosphere and emit colored light.

For thousands of years, these lights have dazzled people who have documented and sought explanations—both creative and rational—to better understand our world.

The Northern Lights are a “visually stunning event that speaks directly to our emotions,” said Scott D. Young, planetarium astronomer at the Manitoba Museum. “It doesn’t require understanding to understand it,” he added, but knowing what’s causing the lights can enhance the experience.

“It reminds us that we live in a much larger universe than just our personal corner of a tiny planet, and that we are connected to the universe in some profoundly profound and meaningful ways,” Young explained.

As I gazed up at the aurora and recognized the pretty lights as a link to our wider universe, I understood that a miracle explained by science is no less a miracle. It can be just the opposite. “I think knowing the science behind the lights makes them even more magical,” Young said.

Churchill, better known for its polar bears, reportedly has more than 300 nights of aurora activity per year, but is still an underrated aurora destination. Typically, the Yukon and Northwest Territories account for the majority of Canada’s aurora tourism trade.

But among those who study the sky, the city has a remarkable heritage. From 1957 to 1985, the Churchill Rocket Research Range hosted a stream of scientists who launched more than 3,500 atmospheric sounding rockets and studied the aurora’s effects on long-range communications capabilities. This work helped unravel the mysteries of the upper atmosphere and the Aurora Borealis.

“They would literally launch rockets into the aurora storms and measure everything that’s going on,” Young said. “The science gathered at Churchill forms the basis of today’s theories and predictions about the Northern Lights.”

But Churchill is not just about science. Frontiers North’s itinerary also provided an opportunity to understand the city’s cultural heritage. Touring the Itsanitaq Museum, I saw Inuit artists express the complexity of the phenomenon through intricate soapstone carvings.

During our first night, between photography tips and techniques, our guide Mike Gere described the beliefs of different cultures: Vikings thought the phenomenon was light reflected from the armor of the Valkyries. The Cree believe the lights are the spirits of their ancestors.

In the five nights I stayed in Churchill I saw the Northern Lights. But that night in Wapusk was the most dramatic of all. Sometimes the depiction resembled a falling wall of rain; at other times like an oily vapor gliding across the sky.

Nothing was detracted from the fact that the aurora forecast, based on research done here in Churchill, had told us to expect the show. In fact, I was glad to have my camera set up in anticipation and delighted to capture the lights arching over the tipi.

The Northern Lights, I now understood, can be both a spiritual and a scientific connection to unseen worlds. And as I learned from Churchill, one side – the emotional or the rational – doesn’t distract the other.

Karen Gardiner traveled as a guest of Frontiers North Adventures, which has not reviewed or approved this item.

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