We'd been flying for hours. In the row ahead, two American hunters on their way up to Baker Lake to bag a few musk ox adjusted their large rumps in the turboprop's small seats. My friend Jo gave up reading the inflight magazine, with its ads for romantic weekend escapes to Edmonton, and pressed her forehead against the little window to study the lake-pocked landscape of northern Manitoba, which was mottled brown-and-white as far as the eye could see, as if God had spread a tattered lace tablecloth across the wide plain.

"I'm pretty sure we won't be bumping into Rod Stewart up here," she said dryly.

The day before, in the elevator of Winnipeg's elegant Fairmont Hotel, we'd had the adolescent thrill of running into the aging rock star-or at least his body double-on the way to a sold-out concert at the new MTS Centre. Now we were 1,700 kilometres north of the city, closer to Nunavut than the corner of Portage and Main, hoping for a less random encounter with the stars. We were heading for Churchill, looking for a front-row seat at that dramatic and long-running show called the aurora borealis.

It was certainly not a sure thing. Cloud cover, moon phases, nuclear arms in North Korea-there were plenty of variables to confound us. And you could catch the act in other places, of course. I grew up in northern B.C. and already knew one version of the show from childhood. But Churchill is to the northern lights what Broadway is to musical theatre: the shows are big, the actors are reliable, and you never know when you're going to encounter an award-winning performance.

The plain little port community, which claims to be "the polar bear capital of the world", is arguably the best place in the world to view the lights, centred as it is under the northern "auroral oval", the region with the highest and most intense auroral activity. The kaleidoscopic light show, which peaks in the winter months, is caused when the sun spits electrically charged particles at the earth. When that solar saliva trickles into the upper atmosphere and excites its oxygen and nitrogen, the results are colourful, to say the least.

Our boots squeaked on a thin white crust of sparkling snow as we tramped out of the airport. The calendar said March 20-the spring equinox-and though the daffodils were already dying in Vancouver, Churchill was just beginning to enjoy milder temperatures: -24 °?C without the wind chill.

We rode into town with Kevin Burke, a long-time resident who, as a parks officer at Wapusk National Park in summer and a guide for a local adventure-tour company in winter, serves the 15,000 tourists who arrive each year.

He indulged our newbie wonderment during the 20-minute drive, stopping to let us photograph fluffy arctic hares and a family of snow-white rock ptarmigan. We chirped with excitement to finally see the vast (albeit frozen) expanse of Hudson Bay. Who did not, at some point in their Canadian elementary education, put an azure-blue Laurentian pencil crayon to work colouring in that mythic inland ocean? It is, as author Will Ferguson observed in the travelogue Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw, a place that exists only on maps for most Canadians, "the cartographic emptiness in the middle of who we are." That day it was not calm and blue but choppy and white: it looked as if a magician had touched a wand to the heaving seas and frozen them in place.

At the hostel-like Seaport Hotel, Jo and I dumped our bags, bundled ourselves against the biting cold, and went out to make the most of the few remaining daylight hours-paying particular attention to the "Polar Bear Alert: Do Not Walk Here" signs scattered about the squat, drab buildings.

We came TO see the skies, but the land insisted on its share of attention.

It is a phrase that peppers local conversation in Churchill-"I was out on the land"; "I wish I could spend more time on the land"; "We spent the weekend on the land"-and it connotes something both physical and spiritual. Burke had told us that Churchill was a "take-it-or-leave-it proposition: either it grabs you or you leave". And clearly what grabbed people here, Natives and imports alike, was the land: the silent, boundless tundra with its coarse beauty, wildlife bounty, and unrelenting physical challenge.

At least that was how Jessie Wastasticoot explained it to us. A Cree Native who sews leather crafts for a local gift shop, she wistfully described the eternal appeal of the only landscape she has ever known: "When I go home from work, all I want is to head out there on the land. We hunt and we see things. You see the animals; you see the lights. It is always so great. You get on your Ski-Doo and there is always something to see."

The young Frenchman looked me up and down and shook his head. "You definitely don't look puffy enough," he said, marching back to his truck. I was wearing every piece of winter clothing I owned, having spent the morning skidding over the tundra behind a team of supercharged sled dogs. Emile returned with the Friendly Giant's parka. I slipped it on and disappeared from sight.

"You don't want to be uncomfortable," he said, settling me on a waiting Ski-Doo.

Helmetless, we bounced across the frozen Churchill River at a speed much faster than I am allowed to drive at home on Bowen Island. I was acutely aware that I was discovering a new personal cold threshold out there on the land, and I will admit that for the next hour and a half nothing else-not the hair-raising snowmobile ride, not the ice hummocks that looked like frolicking polar bears, not the 250-year-old Prince of Wales fort built by the Hudson's Bay Co.-riveted my attention quite so much as my frozen fingers and toes.

Later, when feeling returned, I found myself thinking about the 18th- century Hudson's Bay Co. employees who spent years within the fort's cold stone walls. I wondered what they would have made of people who paid good money to visit Churchill in the middle of winter on the off chance that they might see the northern lights.

The clouds conspired against us at first. Bone-weary after our chilling outdoor play, we dragged ourselves to the Aurora Domes, a former National Research Council observatory, pretending to each other that we wouldn't be disappointed if we didn't see the lights.

A small, heated structure between the town and the airport, the facility's main draw is two Plexiglas domes about three metres in diameter, which afford a relatively clear view of the sky above. As many as 10 people can sit beneath each dome, in a scene reminiscent of a 1970s hot-tub party. When the skies cooperate, it must be bliss to sit in shirtsleeves and watch for hours as the embroidered cloths of heaven unfurl overhead. As it was, we watched a couple of grainy video documentaries about what the northern lights would have looked like had we been able to see them, and we only left when we began to get drowsy in the stifling warmth.

It was a relief when our last day dawned clear. After dinner, we drove away from town in a big-wheeled tundra buggy that lurched across the frozen landscape like a Detroit-built Frankenstein's monster. It took almost half an hour to cover a few kilometres.

I was watching out the back window, willing something to happen. Suddenly there was a glow on the horizon, like a dusting of powdered sugar suspended in midair. I nudged Jo. As we watched, a smear of eerie green light began to arc and pulse across the obsidian sky.

Parked in the quiet, spruce-lined shelter of Seahorse Gully, we braved a few minutes in the knifelike cold to stand on the outdoor viewing platform. It was not like the movies-no firework showers of red, white, and blue. It was not like the airport postcards-no curtains of colour draped against the night sky. It was not like anything we had expected.

As the green light flowed over us, swirling and straining like a rhythmic gymnast's ribbon, I saw that Jo's eyes had filled with tears.

We stopped talking and stared until our necks hurt.

ACCESS: Visit the Churchill Chamber of Commerce's Web site (www .churchillmb.net/~cccomm/) for information on travel planning and accommodation. The site also lists tour operators. Recommended: Frontiers North Adventures (1-800-663-9832; www.frontiersnorth.com/) and Churchill Wild (1-866-UGO-WILD; www.churchillwild.com/). Calm Air (1-888-839-2256; www.calm air.com/) makes the 3.5-hour flight between Winnipeg and Churchill weekdays year-round and daily during polar bear season. During peak northern lights viewing season (February/March) one-way adult fares range from $697 to $808; return flights are a relative bargain at $942. If time allows, VIA Rail (1-800-561-8630; www.viarail.com/) offers a highly recommended two-night excursion year-round between Winnipeg and Churchill. Fares range from $269 to $676 depending on sleeping class; advance-fare discounts are available. Additional information is available through Travel Manitoba: 1-800-665-0040, www.travelmanitoba.com/.