There’s an Inuit legend that warns sky gazers against whistling at the Northern Lights. If you do, goes the legend, the lights will come down and carry you away.

While it’s true that viewing this celestial lightshow can transport you in the poetic sense; if you are lucky enough to be seeing them at Blachford Lake Lodge, (www.blachfordlakelodge.com) you will strongly resist any efforts – supernatural or otherwise – to take you anywhere else.

Spring equinox, that time of year when both day and night are in perfect balance, is also an ideal time to balance your work with play and head north to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. The aurora can be seen from late fall to early spring, but winter’s permanent darkness and sub zero temperatures don’t do a lot for the morale, and you certainly don’t have the same choices you’d have if you waited for those days to get a little longer; choices like snowshoeing, ice fishing, cross country skiing or mushing along the lake in a dogsled.

Yellowknife, in an area where the aurora performs its dance of fire on about 3 nights out of 5, is ideally placed. The area also boasts a high number of cloudless skies, a friendly population of 17,000, and a wilderness resort like Blachford Lake Lodge, only a twenty-minute trip away by Twin Otter or Cessna. According to locals, the lodge just happens to be under one of the most intense areas of the Northern Hemisphere’s giant aurora oval. Owner/operator Mike Freeland knew what he was doing when he erected his lodge in 2000. He also deliberately sited the imposing post and beam structure for maximum aurora viewing. Without lifting a finger you can view the lights fireside from the cozy Aurora Lounge, from under the down duvet in your bedroom, or - such decadence - from the outdoor hot tub while you sip your hot rum.

This shimmering spectacle is a result of solar explosions in collision with the earth’s magnetic field, that auroral oval around the magnetic North Pole. While most of the streamers of charged particles surge past the planet, a few get dragged down by the magnetism of the poles and begin their performance a hundred miles above the earth, energized and fanned by the wind. Where this wind meets the magnetic field, electricity is created, about 9 billion kilowatt-hours annually. The gasses of hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen can glow red, green, violet, blue or yellow depending on conditions. They can shimmer, they can tint; they can linger or they can lunge across the sky; no two shows are ever the same.

The magnetic field is slowly shifting, pulling the lights with them. The Japanese who used to flock to their northern island of Hokkaido to witness the magic, now migrate to the Canadian north. Some Japanese believe that making love under the northern lights is lucky, and can result in conception – if the coupling can survive frostbite, that is.

If you can pull yourself away, fishing on Blachford, Magrum or Grace Lake are popular activities, with lake trout, northern pike, pickerel and whitefish common catches. Or try out the 6-kilometer hiking trail, in boots, skis or snowshoes. Other mobility options include ice skating, dogsled teams or snowmobiles. Any time of year, you can return to the wood-fired sauna, the outdoor hot tub, or the traditional 18’ tipi located on the ridge 300 metres from the lodge and usually lit up with a toasty bonfire.

Because Blachford is the only lodge on the lake, you are guaranteed remote wilderness, with the vast boreal forest and its inhabitants your only company: wolves, lynx, rabbits, moose and sometimes even members of the enormous Bathurst elk herd can often be spotted, sometimes without having to leave your bed. In the deafening northern silence you are going to hear those Northern lights, something scientists keep saying is impossible. Those of us who have stood under them, know a different truth.