A comet ran out across the northern sky, going just a hair slower than expected, and I locked eyes with its arc, seeing myself reflected for the first time in years (if only for a moment) before it faded or fizzled out, going God-knows-where in the cosmos, leaving me behind yearning ever upwards and onwards. The North Country’s sky has an essence to it I can’t fully explain. I’ve seen bigger skies, more detailed skies, and yet there exists a focused purity? Clarity? Something like that existing within its grey-blue backdrop that makes you feel as if you’ve gazed upon them for the first time, like that moment when you’re growing up and realize that there’s more to life than what you can grab and that there will in fact be places that, no matter how real, how tangible, you will never get to experience, only dream of and in that moment you accept that you may never get close, but you can get closer. I’ll never see all that this world has to offer, let alone this universe, but Good God Almighty I find solace knowing that even a small percentage is more than enough to fill a lifetime and that these moments truly are what you make of them.
This series of Trail By Error will likely come slower than usual. In part I’ve been non-stop busy since the trip, and my schedule is only getting further saturated as I enter into my final semester of my master’s program. In part it’s that, honestly, I don’t know quite what I want to say. Do I do a straightforward narrative or something a bit odder? It was an odd trip, so that might be fitting. Good, but odd.
I say this every time, but I learned a hell of a lot this trip. About myself and my psyche. About traversing and adventuring in the true snowy cold. About those I’m close with. The North Country has a way of doing that. I got challenged in unexpected but necessary ways, and I think I know what I need to be working on for the rest of this year. I turned 25 in December and while that’s relatively young, I’m getting to a point where the passage of time is becoming apparent. I’m proud of the ways I’ve grown and there’s so much work left to be done. The work will never really finish, but I hope it keeps getting more interesting. In the immediate term, expect more posts to come on this foray into the North Country, and possibly some announcements on things I’ve been working on behind the scenes… not to be a tease.