Seeking to Photograph the Aurora

A month from today we'll arrive inside the Arctic Circle, in Finnish Lapland.

Maps suggest our chosen village of Saariselka is a little more than 200 kilometers from the Arctic Sea at the Norwegian coast and maybe about 300 k from Murmansk, Russia.

The little village calls itself the northernmost ski resort in the world, but in Lapland, beware the use of the term "ski resort," at least in the sense of Alpine or Rockies destinations. Lapland is a land of much more gentle topography, and it...