I wish that I could write about things in a way that was beautiful and simple. I’ve been reading through the journals I kept last summer and thinking really longingly about what it feels like to write and write and write and write simply because your body can’t hold in all the thoughts. I can see moments in the spaces between words, moments that I won’t forget, moments that somehow escaped the form of sentences and paragraphs. Moments like tissue paper in rain, too beautiful to hold without tearing.

On the summer solstice, we sat at the top of a mountain, drinking beer that tasted of raspberries and waiting for beacon fires to be lit across the mountains. Sarah was so impressed by the way I popped the cap off the bottle, using a door handle at the gas station as a makeshift opener, the satisfying fsssh of the first breath of jewelled liquid inside. It had rained all day and the air was thick and dewy and we were drunk on something that couldn’t be poured from a bottle.

I wrote, the next week:

I remember now, the night they lit the fires across the hills, how we climbed as high as the city would allow, to catch those first glimpses of flame beckoning from gently curving land beyond our reach. A welcome to this new season. The taste of raspberry was sweet on my lips and my head buzzed with the sudden realization of the moment- life will all be different now, my hair will never feel the same, my skin has been touched by the mountains, unaccountably aged. I told Sarah what I was thinking about: ridding myself of everything I brought into this new life, casting my belongings out along the mountainside like sweetly falling snow, silhouettes of the girl I used to be ballooning themselves across the town spread out below our feet, catching at dreams along the way.

I will never be in this exact place again, but it has changed me forever. I am always moving, I am always learning, I am always thinking and questioning and wanting. And wanting. I never ever have to stop.