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Published: December 25th 2014
Christmas eve. My colleagues are gone to celebrate Christmas with their families, so have my neighbours. I am completely alone. Not a living soul around for perhaps 2 kilometres, except for the two older brothers (89 and 91 I believe) that live in the other house here, about 700 meters away. I haven’t seen them for a while, maybe they are gone as well. But I am not all alone, as I was ‘watering the flowers’ outside in the evening, a whale came as close to the shore as any I have seen or heard so far! Even after five weeks of relentless whale watching, the sound of their breathing is something spectacular, and I feel privileged to hear it so often. In the last few nights there has been quite a lot of northern lights activity during the night. Usually I am asleep by then, but I can see the activity in graphs that are produced by the geophysics institute. These graphs are real time and they show you basically what you have missed. So the last two nights I stayed up until 2 in the morning, and I would wake up at 3 and at 4 to check for
northern lights. The first night was in vain. There was nothing, I have not seen the graphs so flat as during that night. The second day was a bit better, as their was quite some spectacular activity around nine in the evening. The more common green lights were accompanied by red lights that are scarcely visible with the naked eye. They are produced at a higher altitude in our atmosphere. Addicted as I am, I still had to stay awake until two and wake up again at 3 and at 4. Nothing happened until two o’clock, so I took a nap until three. As I woke up I realised that there were three possibilities. 1. There is no activity. Perhaps the best option as I don’t have to leave the comfort of my warm bed, but it means I would have to try again tomorrow. 2. There might have been activity in the hour when I was awake. Still, no need to get up, but I would have to try again tomorrow. 3. There is enough activity to get up. This last option was the case, so after a deep sigh I pushed away my three blankets and I climbed
out of my bed. In a matter of seconds my feed went numb with cold. One by one I put on all my layers of clothes over my pyjamas, grabbed the camera and went outside. I was to sleepy to walk anywhere, so I stayed right beside my cabin, looked at the northern lights for about an hour, and had a very good Christmas in my little cabin by the fjord. On the 25
th I have a Christmas party with an old friend of mine and some of his friends/neighbours. On the 26
thI have to help with taking water samples for the project, so I will be on a boat at 7.00 in the morning I think. And in the afternoon of that day, Christmas can truly start for me, as Linde will arrive in Tromsø!
That means that today is a very busy day, because I have to tidy up the house, do the dishes, take a shower, find my deodorant, find some “fresh” clothes, hide all the fast-food packages and wrappings, eat the remaining fast-food (no problem there), hide all the dirty whale magazines and clean the whole house! Of course I don’t want to give Linde
the impression that I have not been spending my time here in a healthy and responsible way…. So, it is time to get busy!
Have a very good Christmas everyone!
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