Northern Lights Hunting with This Indigenous Tracker Was the Most Moving Adventure of My Life

Joe Buffalo Child grew up beneath the northern lights, but one starry winter night in particular remains etched in his memory. He was six years old and camping with his grandparents to monitor the family trapline, a 50-mile stretch of snares set for rabbits and muskrats in the snowy boreal forest outside Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Slipping out of the cozy tent, his breath fogging as he gazed skyward, it wasn’t long before Buffalo Child found what he was seeking: “It was stars, stars, stars, then—boom! The aurora’s there,” he told me, his eyes sparkling at the flashback.

On trapline trips like these, Buffalo Child learned about the many ways nature was tied to the traditions of his people, the Dene, who have inhabited central and northwest Canada for over 30,000 years. By day, his grandfather took him hunting or fishing—outings that came with important lessons, like how to predict an approaching storm by studying the movement of the clouds or the height of a seagull’s flight. Come dusk, bathed in the gas lamp’s honey glow, his grandmother shared spiritual beliefs, like how Buffalo Child’s beloved tie-dyed sky dance, known in the Denesuline language as ya’ke ngas (“the sky is stirring”), carried messages from his ancestors.

“I was on the land under the aurora even as a baby,” he said. “The aurora’s always been part of our life.”

This deep knowledge of nature and cultural connection to the night sky were foundational to his future as a professional northern-lights chaser and guide for his company North Star Adventures. Now 60 years old, Buffalo Child has spent nearly two decades sharing his aurora-tracking abilities with those willing to make the journey up to Yellowknife. He is considered one of the most well-known aurora hunters in North America.

My own aurora-chasing adventure in Yellowknife this September began with the odds stacked against me. The city is a dream destination for astrotourists, thanks to its location within the auroral oval—the doughnut-shaped zone of northern-lights activity. The ribbons dance here an average of 240 nights annually. Even so, the Northwest Territories tourism board recommends staying a minimum of three nights to give the weather and solar activity a chance to align.

Flight delays robbed me of one precious night, and thick cloud cover the following day only amplified my anxiety. I passed the hours I spent waiting for Buffalo Child to pick me up for my first aurora chase of the trip by frantically refreshing the forecast app on my phone in search of a clear-sky prediction.

This fretting continued until 10 P.M., when a booming voice in my hotel lobby set the night’s adventure in motion. It was Buffalo Child. “North Star Adventures, let’s go!”

Buffalo Child looked as much like a football coach as he did a tour guide, with his baseball cap, jet-black joggers, and Nike trainers. I stashed my phone, then ran to greet him and meet the rest of the tour group. Buffalo Child’s wide smile and the slogan on the back of his company shirt put my weather woes at ease: “As long as I can see the land I know everything will be okay.”

Spotting the northern lights is never guaranteed, something I’ve learned in the five years I’ve hunted auroras around the world. And while this fact twists my belly into sailors’ knots, it’s why I love it. It’s about the chase, the spontaneity, and—as Buffalo Child told our group of six as we set off in the tour van—the adrenaline.

When Buffalo Child launched his company in 2007, nearly all his tourism peers had taken a stationary, more comfort-oriented approach to aurora-borealis-watching. They built camps with toasty tepees and fires to keep guests warm while awaiting the show. “As a single father, I didn’t have the resources for a camp,” he said. Instead, he developed an experience inspired by his favorite show, the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers.

Buffalo Child’s approach is true aurora hunting, I thought as we motored north up Highway 4, also known as the Ingraham Trail. And he is a master tracker. On suboptimal nights, like this one threatened to be, Buffalo Child uses his grandfather’s weather-prediction training. He also relies on a regional network of Dene pals, who text him sky-clarity updates, helping him find elusive gaps in the clouds through which the colorful pillars can be seen.

Our outing would test him, however. Thick clouds cloaked the sky for the first two hours. The only thing we had going for us was their speed, which revealed brief patches of stars. Around midnight, we pulled off the road for a break. Buffalo Child scanned the heavens while we stretched our legs and sipped hot cocoa. I pointed my iPhone camera toward a patch of stars and hit the shutter button. While my eyes weren’t adjusted enough to the dark to see it, my camera caught a brief burst of purple pillars between the clouds.

“Joe, they’re up there!” I squealed. He raced over to me, but within seconds the cloud gap had closed. Still, catching some activity gave us hope.

Back on the hunt, around 1 A.M., Buffalo Child decided that it was time to follow his grandfather’s golden rule when it came to bad weather: Don’t wait for the dark clouds to pass—ride straight through the storm and clear skies will follow.

He looked at us with a mischievous grin. “Let’s go into the storm,” he said.

The atmosphere turned electric, with communal nerves so palpable that the van felt like the starting line of a marathon. We knew this was our final shot. I smooshed my nose against the cold window, willing stars to appear.

Less than 20 minutes later I spied a glittery dot, then more, then the full outline of the Big Dipper. Soon after, the other side of the vehicle erupted in cheers. “The lights are out!” shrieked my seatmate from Toronto.

We reached a roadside turnout and scrambled out the door. Lavender and lime streamers sashayed through a wide hole in the clouds. Giddy chatter filled the air. When Buffalo Child shot off his precautionary bear flare, it felt like celebratory fireworks.

I felt tingly while gazing heavenward, the fluorescent hues intensifying as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Awe-striking moments like these put me in a kind of flow state, where my senses heighten and something near transcendence settles in. I wasn’t alone. Buffalo Child had described similar sentiments earlier that day: “When you’re under the aurora, you’re overcome with this profound feeling—you know you’re in the right place, at the right time in your life, to see it.”

We only had ten minutes to enjoy the fluorescent show before the curtain of clouds closed, but that brevity didn’t disappoint. We felt triumphant, and back in the van we shared photos and relived the night’s adventure.

I realized that Buffalo Child wasn’t among us. Peeking out the back window, I saw him standing alone, peering up at the obsidian sky.

“I step away and talk to my grandparents” in these moments, he told me later.

Buffalo Child’s Dene upbringing did more than hone his night-sky savvy. His grandparents filled his childhood with love and taught him to be hardworking and self-sufficient. He believes that these traits protected him “like a body of armor” when, just months after his cherished aurora-streaked trapline trip, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police forced him into a government-funded residential school. The institution was designed to assimilate Indigenous youth into white culture by alienating them from their families; Buffalo Child remembers it as an abuse-riddled environment.

Decades later, as an adult, Buffalo Child’s strong cultural ties inspired him to swap a stifling engineering job for a passion-fueled tourism business, where he could preserve and share the best lessons of his childhood.

Buffalo Child’s grandparents never got to see him take this leap, so he makes a point to demonstrate his gratitude when he feels their presence the most—beneath the lights. After each successful aurora hunt, he says, “Granny, grandpa, I hope I’m still doing you proud.”

I resonate with this deeply. I didn’t find the courage to quit my lackluster communications career to become a travel writer until my dad’s passing in 2018, something that opened my eyes to life’s fleetingness. This dream job, which has since taken me around the world, was largely inspired by my dad’s adventurous, no-regrets approach to life. I would give anything to show him how far I’ve come.

Each time I’m under an aurora, I feel like I can. I view the lights, particularly the luminous shows that all the forecasts said shouldn’t have happened, as a wink from him—a sign that he’s up there pulling strings. I’ve caught the colors on way too many seemingly hopeless nights.

And thank goodness my dad pulled those strings during my Yellowknife trip, because on that adrenaline-filled hunt, and the successful chase the following evening, Buffalo Child reaffirmed what I knew in my heart to be true: beneath the lights, you’re never alone.

“My grandmother said that when you see the aurora dancing fast, it means somebody you knew, or a family member who passed on, is sending back a message of goodwill,” he said. “I’m OK over here, you don’t need to be sad. Keep living a good life, and we’ll meet again one day.”

Joe Buffalo Child’s Best Tips for Northern-Lights Hunting

Most of us didn’t grow up under the northern lights or in a location where they are prevalent, but aurora activity has spiked in the lower 48 this year, and more opportunities to see them are on the horizon. This is a result of solar maximum, a roughly 11-year peak in activity that’s now underway and expected to last through at least mid-2025.

I asked Buffalo Child how to successfully catch the show. Read on for his expert advice.

Head to Dark-Sky Destinations at High Latitudes

During solar maximum, your odds of catching the spectacle in lower latitudes like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are improved, but you still need relatively strong storm activity to see them. In high-latitude locales like Yellowknife, or Fairbanks, Alaska, the northern lights should be active most nights. “In 2022, we saw auroras every night for six weeks,” says Buffalo Child.

When deciding between destinations, take weather into consideration. For example, Yellowknife is inland and tends to experience less cloud cover than Iceland—also favored by lights hunters—which has a moodier coastal climate.

Not sure where to head? I recently wrote about the best places to see the northern lights around the world, including the places that were most successful for me.

Use the Right Data

Pull up an aurora-chasing app and you’ll inevitably see a Kp rating, which predicts geomagnetic activity on a zero to nine scale (the higher, the better). According to Buffalo Child, “Kp doesn’t matter.” It’s rarely an accurate real-time measure of whether you’ll actually see the lights, especially at high latitudes, he told me.

Instead, Buffalo Child suggests downloading the SpaceWeatherLive app to track the speed and density of the solar wind, which carries charged particles from the sun to earth; as speed and density increase, the likelihood of a prominent display does too. 

Buffalo Child also suggests learning to read cloud forecasts to understand timing and movement of the clouds; my go-to app for this is Windy.

Visit a Northern-Lights Destination in the Right Season

At high latitudes, you can’t see the northern lights during the summer, due to the midnight sun. Buffalo Child says that Yellowknife usually has minimal cloud cover in September, August, March, and April—in that order.

In general, the best seasons for viewing the northern lights are fall through winter, usually September through late March. But reach out to a local tourism bureau for the most accurate information for that area.

Tour with a Local Company

That said, it’s always better to tap a local expert—especially someone like Buffalo Child who can predict cloud movements without technology.

“Connect, engage, and consult with a local—ideally an Indigenous company,” Buffalo Child says. There are countless reasons, but here are three big ones: local guides are well-versed in the roadways, in wildlife risks, and in regional weather patterns.

Plus, supporting Indigenous guides helps people like Buffalo Child keep valuable traditions alive. “With residential schools, we lost a lot of our skills, and we need to try to get those back,” he says. Tourism is an important avenue. “This is our land,” he told me, “and through tourism, I show people that we can be ourselves and make a living.”

North Star Adventures’ general aurora-hunting tours with a local Indigenous guide and large groups start at $107. Buffalo Child, however, only leads small group tours, which start at $143. If you’re looking for a multi-night adventure, book a fall package (from $633) for three nights of guided aurora hunting, plus a sightseeing tour of Yellowknife and Indigenous storytelling at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. Accommodations are not included. I like the centrally located Explorer Hotel Yellowknife (from $256 at Booking.com).

Adventure and astrotourism writer Stephanie Vermillion has chased the lights around the world for years, from waterfalls in Iceland to remote sheep farms in Greenland. Her book 100 Nights of a Lifetime: The World’s Ultimate Adventures After Dark is out December 3.

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