Pieces

Today, as I was writing a postcard to a friend, I was overcome with a strong bittersweet nostalgia. It was a warm, heavy feeling and weighed me down. I just sat there and let it hit me. I was writing about leaving Ås and the community that I’ve found here. And what a lovely surprise this little Norwegian town has been.

It’s strange to me that I got here almost four months ago and how much has changed in that time. In the beginning, the sun was only out for about five hours a day. It rose at nine am and set around two. Now it’s sunny for eighteen hours out of the day and light from five to eleven. This change in nature reflects a change in me, too: shifting from a little light to a lot of it. I’ve found some really, really incredible friends. Friends that dance and get up early to do yoga and jump in cold fjords and go dumpster diving and educate themselves and laugh and cook yummy food and speak highly of one another. I feel that living in such a small place has allowed me to get to know the people and the town more in depth than any other place I’ve lived. I know how the creek down the road fluctuates from early winter to sunny spring. How different my friends are when we’re dancing to a Swedish fiddle tune or when we’re studying economic surplus. Or how the energy of the whole town shifts when the sun comes out. How the doves coo and the snow drops bloom, only to be smothered by their heavy white namesake.

My heart drops when I think of leaving this place. I feel peaceful. I do not feel like I need to impress anyone. Life here is slow. My health is in my hands. I have the space to focus on my studies and the freedom to travel. It finally feels like home.

But I’m excited to go back to Idaho. It’s my first home, the place where I grew up and will continue to grow. I’m excited for my sister’s wedding in beautiful Donnelly and for living in a tent. For obsessing over silly boys I kissed at the street dance, for playing kickball, for floating Valley Creek. For my special and unique communities in Stanley and Sandpoint. For Lake Pend Oreille, where I learned to swim and whose shape is tattooed on my ribs. For the gradual hills peppered with sagebrush and the steep river canyons littered with burnt husks of ponderosa pines. For learning about people who populated these areas thousands of years before us. For the wilderness that floors you when you look at it and still exists when you don’t.

There are pieces of my heart all over the world now. With Mia in Whitefish, Nora, Milo, and Thyra in Ås, Amelia in Bozeman, and Emi in Boise. I feel both fortunate and unfortunate that I have such amazing people everywhere because it means my heart is strewn across the world like spilled marbles. I can’t be in one place at once. And that is the beauty, and pain, of it all.