Thoughts on Plots is fueled by caffeine and panic. Thank you for being here :D
Why was I in Maine? Who gave me the right to hike a National Park? How did I fly into Virginia and then end up in Acadia?
No one knows the answers. Not even me.
I took a lot of photos of what happened and honestly? Not even that was enough to remember exactly all that happened or cherish all that I felt.
Even now, not even a handful of days out of this trip, every single moment is a memory. Good, bad, painful, cathartic.
And love. So much happiness and love for the people I was with and the people we have become.
It’s not easy getting older. Holding onto the things that made us who we are and suffering under the weight of who we think we have to be. It takes a lot to look at yourself in the mirror, however many years down the line, and smile at the laugh lines and the sudden gray peppering your hair.
I hope that the you of today can look back at the you of yesterday with grace and humility. Because you two are going to be the best of friends and you won’t even know it, you won’t even remember that that was written in the stars.
Don’t know what I expected. Don’t know what I saw. I’ll leave it at that.
I think I love comic book shops. No matter where you are in the country, it’s the same, alt vibe with vintage moody lighting and packaging from the ‘80s and the shop owner will be tatted neck to toe but as soon as you ask about his favorite comic he will light up with a smile you thought was only reserved for lovers and family members.
Maybe it was because it was Maine, maybe it was because it was the East Coast, but never have I seen fireworks so close with such apparent disregard for human life below it. I watched these suckers blast into the sky and thought “Man. This must have been what the dinosaurs saw. How beautiful.”
Photos do not do this moment justice. The light. The shadows. The people. The bagels and the eggs and the child who couldn’t stop laughing. It was so perfect and surreal but so refreshing to feel alive.
Look at this trailhead. Look at how many markers there are, how many different places you could go. Think of how many people have walked this path and how many have seen this sign and decided, for one reason or another, to go forward one way or the other. You are not as alone as you think, but you are ultimately traveling a path wholly your own. Enjoy it.
Would these several-mile-long hikes have been easier if I took every small, miscellaneous item out of my backpack? Probably not. My capybara and Fuzz plushie gave me joy. My ballpoint pen caused panic but my Tide pen made us rethink posing on a mountain with your friends. I had snacks and water and it was a good time.
As much as I suffered on these hikes, these views were absolutely worth it. Sometimes good things take time and that time might be painful, but look at what you get to appreciate at the end of the tunnel. But also truly, I’m so unfit you could have collected my sweat into two buckets and made me carry it back down the mountain to water the blueberry bushes at the trail entrances.
Have you ever seen such vibrant trees? Such deep blues and such poetry across an empty sky?
Beauty and pain and lichen on my roots. The sun will continue to shine and I? I will stand as tall as my trunk will allow.
This was a live photo and it felt like an early 2000s coming-of-age movie as we drove along dirt roads and and watched the clouds float by. Except we’re all in our mid to late 20s. So it was less a coming-of-age. More of an acceptance-of-time-passing. We rolled our windows down and let the wind wipe the sweat away.
I couldn’t have imagined this if I tried. I’m so used to a nature that is bland and tired and trying to see anything besides that feels like an overwhelming culture shock.
The clouds threatened to close our windows but still, we persisted in the city.
