In the end, we lie back on a pile of packed snow. “You can sleep,” she says firmly, “when you can be dead.” Céline and I look for our own unheated, nonrotating recliners. Céline chides a woman who has been dozing in a corner. My eyes hurt.īack at the tepee, I drink some hot cocoa. I can barely walk, but I can’t stand still. Others fiddle with cameras on tripods, never looking up some sprawl in camp chairs. A few visitors stand alone, heads back, arms dangling. We watch, and over about twenty minutes, a cloud grows into a fine, transparent white arc stretching across the lower half of the sky, brightening until it is a river of pearl.īack by the lake, little huddles of people mill about, like small bison. I’ve tried to keep my own expectations tightly bound. Thousands of photos of emerald-green drapery and quivering ruby-red arcs-captured with cameras gathering much more light than human eyes can and then edited and enhanced-make false promises. The aurora follows its own subtle schedule, and aurora tourism runs on hope, on expectations deformed by Instagram and travel websites. We don’t really know what we are seeking, what we will see. But it is just headlights from the highway. “Is that it?” a woman says, pointing at a pale flash on the opposite horizon. In fact, nothing much has changed, and the town is plainly visible from miles away. Since 2016, the city government there has had a policy to protect dark skies. “Is that it?” someone asks, pointing at a small dome of brightness on the horizon. I went north for the aurora, but also this: the dark, the sky, the ice. I longed for cold, the kind that would make me sit up and pay attention. We complained about the early crocus, the small snowpack. All winter, Portland, Oregon, where I live, had been unseasonably warm. I climb one and join a crowd of squat, clumsy silhouettes. The tepees are in a small bowl, and trails lead through the trees to low bluffs with longer views. We find our tepee at the edge of a field-a place to warm up and rest, but not to stay. As we emerge from the woods, Céline points out the path to the heated, 360-degree-rotating recliners (extra fee required). The darkness is peculiar, oddly blurry, as though a mist is rising from the white floor of snow. More than a hundred people are plodding from the parking lot, along hard snowy trails between dark trees. We follow Céline’s blinking red headlamp, the only way we can tell her apart from the crowd. The few lights are dim and downcast to protect our night vision. So we will be hopeful.”Īfter about twenty minutes, the bus turns down a narrow road toward Aurora Village, a collection of tepees and small buildings beside a frozen lake. “We have clouds tonight,” she says over the PA system. Our guide is Céline, a petite Frenchwoman. It is almost as cold inside as out, and the windows are already icing over from our breath. The Japanese travelers fill the first three, and the rest of us, a mixed dozen from several countries, climb into the last. Outside, in the black Canadian winter night, four yellow school buses pull up. The room is filled with a milling crowd of Japanese tourists wearing identical red parkas and black polar boots the size of toasters. The configuration settings are pretty good with options to allow you to play any title/chapter, adjust the playback screen size, and you can also customize your own style preferences, such as choosing the language etc.By the time I finish dressing and lumber into the lobby of the Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife, it’s 9 pm. Aurora Blu-ray Player for Mac gives you free control over your playback options, and has been designed to play both protected discs and unprotected ones. It comfortably supports various media formats such as Blu-ray, DVD movie, Video CD, HD media, 1080P media, RMVB, MKV, MOV, AVI, FLV, MP3, WMA, and AAC. It smoothly runs on OS X El Capitan, as well as all previous versions of Mac OS X. Overall, Aurora Blu-ray Player for Mac is a highly capable media player. Aurora Blu-ray Player for Mac supports DTS HD, and AC3/DTS 5.1 audio. Mac users can enjoy the high quality Blu-ray experience brought by multiple audio track output. So, you can share your reviews with friends on Facebook or Twitter. Aurora Blu-ray Player for Mac supports social media sharing options.
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