January 20, 2026

dear Norway

I know it’s not my fault, but please accept my apologies for this latest ridiculousness from the powers-that-be in our country. (Or, at least, the powers-that-pretend-to-be.) Obviously, there’s no logical, rational, sane, effectual reason for their madness, and though we knew something unsavory was coming down the pipeline, I’m not sure what could have prepared us for this. But I don’t want to waste this precious moment cataloguing what you already know, and you have pressing business to attend to as it is. So instead I want to tell you about yesterday’s snow. How it fell like it had all the time in the world. I walked in it for hours, bewitched by the large flakes as they descended, not minding that the tops of my hiking shoes were getting wet, not minding that the sun hadn’t come out as forecast. I’d been wondering lately if I wasn’t quite built for winter, that I didn’t have the stamina to see it through with the same fortitude and gusto I had as a kid, but on this day I was back to being that kid some morning school had been canceled and the great mouth of freedom yawned open. I thought of you then, clear across the Atlantic and then some, and though I’ve never traveled to you, I imagined some doppelgänger version of myself under the same sky, looking up. And soft drifts landing on an eyelash, a cheek, a bottom lip, before melting. It’s not hard to believe that, despite the miles, not much separates us. The breath pluming in the cold air. How we marvel at the stillness of a body of water, the fingers of an old tree, the joyous parade of ducks passing through. I believe these things will outlive all of us, but I like to think that we will leave behind this imprint of our wonder. That the old trees will remember we gazed at them with deep respect. That the waters will have heard our sighs and years from now birds will pass along the story of our amazement. That every snowfall will carry the brief warmth of our skin.