Dear _____,

I hope wherever you live – both now and wherever you may find yourself in your future – you have access to wild spaces. It could be a small city park, a wayward beach a short walk away, or maybe even an expansive desert that dwells on the edge of your hometown – whatever it may be, I hope there is just something to remind you of what exists outside of our day-to-day life.

Because there’s something about these spaces, isn’t there? Any environment or ecosystem – as small as a tiny wooded creek or as large as a mountain range – it takes us out of the routines we make for ourselves and reminds us that this is simply… here. It lives and breathes and we are lucky enough sometimes to witness that. The air here feels liberating, releasing. You might feel it as a breath in the wind rushing past your cheek. You might feel it in yourself as your eyes take in every detail, each color and sound and sensation of this patch of world. And in these moments, perhaps we relearn what magic is and can be – sometimes it is recognizing the sheer majesty of what surrounds us.

I have found – and maybe you have too – that it is easy to surrender yourself to these spaces when we discover them, either for the first time or again after a long absence. And by doing so, we begin to fit ourselves into their gaps. Allow your senses melt around you until the sweat on the back of your neck becomes the morning dew. The sand caught under your fingernails turns into a micro-desert, your body a new biome the world possesses. The saltwater you submerge yourself in blankets you, the ocean welcoming you with open arms to rock you gently within its rhythm… or something along those lines.

It doesn’t take that much for me to feel that way – maybe you’re the same way too. Because no matter who we are or where we’ve come from, the world reminds us that we all come from within it and we all belong within its borders. Sometimes we feel it more strongly than others, but that primal feeling of the world breathing into us still lingers inside. It’s a matter of calling it back to the surface.

At least, I think so.

Originally written 15-07-2025

Accompanying music: Campfires by Jim Guthrie