Happy new year, friends!
I spent the first day of 2024 on a five-hour hike at Point Reyes. It’s the same hike I’ve been doing for years—to the ocean and back, no frills—except this time we went half a mile farther than usual and were rewarded with a magical beach waterfall.
It felt like a metaphor.
Go a little further, be a little more curious, reach a little beyond your comfort zone, and be rewarded with the sublime.
Then again, on that same hike, K got bitten by a tick and the soles of H’s hiking boots broke clean off, forcing them to journey for hours in muddy socks.
So, perhaps the sublime is relative. Or has a sense of humor.
I love a good calendar change though—any excuse for tedious self-reflection (on top of my daily journaling), witchy rituals involving burning things, and/or careful goal-planning spreadsheets abandoned three weeks later.
Even though time is arbitrary—“just a meaning that we impose on motion,” to quote Anne Carson