About six months ago I was a few miles north of the Arctic Circle, camped off of the Dempster Highway with a view out over a huge valley, and with the Richardson Mountains as a backdrop. With temperatures dropping well below zero Fahrenheit I was at the mercy of the weather and while I did a ton of hiking, there were a lot of times where I was holed up in the Subaru trying very hard to keep warm. One of the songs that I listend to over and over again during that time was a folk song by Nancy Griffith. I added it to the playlist while I was running tonight, and suddenly I was back in the Arctic again — there wasn’t a war or a bad economy, there was just a valley spread out before me, filled with the meandering trails of wolves and foxes. Instead of running on a treadmill I was fighting the wind on those mountains, following the rolling hills and getting sidetracked by a flock of ptarmigan or the tracks of a caribou. I love the days now where I’m able to spend time with friends and family, but I also miss that other life tremendously.
"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell