This is a brutal and beautiful read so give it time as it’s quite short and quickly over. It’s a mix of teenage boredom and frustration in a small town that everyone will recognise and quite extraordinary lyricism about nature and how humans can connect to the landscape. You will never look at images of the Northern Lights in the same way again.
On walks to school, I observe them and try to decipher their language. The chirps sometimes blur into words if I stop trying to listen. I realise that birds see in a completely different way than we humans do. We are slow and lumbering, our language is deep and muddy. Our confinement to the ground elicits pity. They look at us as we look upon the trees, slow but full of longevity. The trees look at the rocks that way. Rocks look at the mountains that way. Mountains look at the water that way. Earth looks at the sun that way. Everyone has an elder.
