Sovereign Lake, Canada
Skiing is intimate travel. Your body constantly adjusts to the demands of the trail; you feel every contour. Even the downward slopes are a shifting dance with gravity.
Standard Time
Those who live here know that during the summer months sunny days far outweigh rainy ones. The summers in Seattle stretch out long and bright. But at this time of year, there’s no denying the advance of the dark. It feels like a return, a falling back into a rhythm that recognizes the weighty presence of night. A sort of memento mori.
In the dark, I lose my usual landmarks. Edges blur. Unknown shapes take their places among the known. I tell myself stories.
Chestnuts
In the fall the streets and sidewalks of Queen Anne Hill are covered in chestnuts. It's beautiful, but also tinged with melancholy. The trees shower this urban world with an abundance of wasted fertility, as if the asphalt could sprout forests. Look around, and you'll see this happening everywhere in the natural world. Nature is all about profusion: put enough out there, and something will stick and carry into the next generation. Humans are no exception: our bodies do the same thing. And our thoughts, our thousands of daily decisions, our efforts to figure out how we should live. We are not about exactitude. And we don't know what will stick.