Chasing the Green: A Night on the Northern Lights Bus out of Alta

You step off the curb into a blue-black Arctic evening and feel the cold like a second wind—clean, sharp, honest. The bus waits with its heater humming, a small moth of warmth in the big northern dark. Windows fog from breath and anticipation as the driver, part meteorologist, part storyteller, consults a live map of cloud and geomagnetic forecasts. There is no guarantee inside that heater; there is only the patient, improvisational art of chasing the sky. For three hours you follow the promise of clear sky along plateau and fjord, swapping stories with strangers who quickly become conspirators in a nocturnal hunt.