"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
-- Closing Time by Semisonic
Dusk v. Dawn
by Christine Reed
I’ve always been bad at goodbyes
Never wanting to make a show of my exit
Preferring to leave quickly
Quietly
Closing doors
Unceremoniously
Never to be opened again
There are versions of myself
Behind those doors
Past lives
I’ve always been up for reinvention
Ready to throw it all away in service
Of the next best thing
I’m finding this goodbye the hardest yet
This dusk lingers on my doorstep
I’ve started to wonder if a new dawn
Must always erase
What came before
Find Christine on Instagram and TikTok @ruggedoutdoorswoman
Read her memoir Alone in Wonderland for a journey on the Wonderland Trail.
5-7-5 and a tanka : ‘done and dusted’ or ‘dawn (and dusked)’
by Bronwyn Preece
haikuing my clock
alarm of rising birdsong
time warped in colour
palette of splayed rays
one-upping impermanence
counting [the] moments
disappearance in dissolve
emerging into immersion
Bronwyn Preece is honoured and privileged to live on the unceded Traditional Territories of
the Lil’wat # and Squamish Peoples in Whistler, BC. This awareness brings with it many levels of responsibility, humbleness, transparency, and collaborative possibilities. She is a site-sensitive poetic-pirate and multi-disciplinary, community-engaged arts practitioner. She holds a PhD in Performance, along with an MA and BFA in Applied Theatre. She has taught, facilitated workshops and performed internationally. She is the author of Gulf Islands Alphabet (Simply Read Books, 2012); and the forthcoming knee deep in high water: riding the Muskwa-Kechika, expedition poems (Caitlin Press, 2023) and Sea to Sky Alphabet (Simply Read Books, 2023); along with multiple academic and artistic publications. She is an avid solo, backcountry-backpacker who writes on the trail, with the word gratitude tattooed on her arm. Find her on Instagram @poetichiker.
Afterglow
by Belinda Arndt
I joke that I am a professional sunset chaser. Whenever a spectacular sunset brews, I message my group chat of friends to tell them to look outside immediately! Some do, but most don't. They mess with me and call me the sunset girl. I just don't want people to miss something so beautiful, especially when our days are filled with busyness and darkness. You never know when someone needs a break to look up at the sky to feel like their world isn't ending.
I am unsure how I started chasing sunsets. As much as I love watching the sun go down on the horizon. I prefer how the sky bursts into dances of colors.
My favorite sunset is the one that comes from darkness. After a thunderstorm, the clouds make enough room for the sun to appear, splitting the rays toproduce the most vibrant reds, purples, pinks, yellows, and blues– like a Bob Ross painting. Those are my favorites, not because of the cliché that something comes from darkness. It's how two extremes work together to produce magic.
In the last few years, I have been lucky to see a lot of magic, especially on my travels. Travels I never thought I would do. Travels that made me the person I am today with the help of Mother Nature.
The night before my birthday, some friends and I went to the highest point at Spruce Knob to chase a sunset. We were unsure if there would be one since it was dark, but Mother Nature knew we needed to see her magic. Suddenly, the sky opened enough that the sun sat between the clouds and the mountains. The sun smiled at us, hinting that it could see us. She was putting on a show for us knowing we were all fighting with our own darkness thanks to the pandemic and life.
a few years later, we were in Lost River celebrating the 4th; my same friends and I decided to take a super last-minute hike. It started to rain. We thought about turning around because we didn't think there was any hope of chasing the last light of the day. But I had a feeling there would be an epic sunset. I was right. As we reached the summit, it felt like we stepped into a different world. Piercing yellows and oranges like a burnt sienna picture encircled us and blinded our view. Finally, the rain stopped, and the sky became a mix of pinks intertwining with the blues of the clouds.
My most cherished places to chase the light are Colorado and Utah. I have witnessed natural enchantment at Colorado National Monument during a quick break between Denver and Moab, watching the last few minutes of light turning numerous colors, signaling the end of a long travel day. And sprinting to the G in Telluride to take it up to Mountain Village, praying I didn't miss the alpenglow of the mountains. And right outside of Sand Dunes National Park where the sunset looked like the Colorado Flag.
Watching blues, reds, and oranges swirl around the sharp, jagged edges of cliffs at Deadhorse State Park gave me a sense of completeness. The last time I was there was eight months before at sunrise. I was very broken then, but the park helped me become less broken. The colors exploded behind the arches as I stood there, thanking the Universe for allowing me to come back again to experience the completion of the cycle of the sun.
Sunset symbolizes the end of the day, the end of the light before darkness comes. But to me, sunsets are about letting go of what happened during the day and setting the next day's intentions. A new beginning.
Belinda Arndt is a solo traveler and adventurer based outside of Washington DC. Her tagline is "It's always an adventure with me!" Catch her adventures on her website WanderingBel.com which aims to build a community of solo travelers to share their travel stories. You can find her on instagram @wandering_bel and Facebook at Wandering Bel Blog
Dusk: The Beginning
by Sierra Eberly
Dusk to many is the end
the end of a day
time to turn in
time to slow down
For me, it’s the beginning
It’s quiet now
Time for reflection
Time for listening
The nighthawks greet me
from high in the night sky
With a dive and a boom
To start off the night
Orange appears
behind their wingtips
and slowly drips down
to the mountains below
The coyote yips
alerting her pack
it’s time for dinner
rabbit better run fast
Here comes the Moon
She’s so graceful and steady
a constant companion
throughout every stage
Now Orion has joined
on Winter’s shoulder
guiding the way
to the next day’s adventure
With dusk comes a calm
a stillness and comfort
with it brings intention
with it brings wonder
Dusk is the beginning
the window for rest
with my heart and mind open
what comes next?
Sierra is a trail runner and backpacker who lives full-time in her campervan with her dog, Snow. She started her own copywriting business, Boondock Consulting, and when not working, she explores trails less traveled every chance she gets. You can find her on Instagram at @sierrastraverse and read her personal blog at www.sierrastraverse.com
When The Sky Gives Way
by Meaghan Martin
Snow and ice crunched under my boots as I led our way up the trail. It was cold, probably in the low twenties, and we could hear the wind above the trees. I could see our breath in the light of our headlamps, swirls of vapor dancing in the only beams of light to pierce the darkness. I glanced back at my partner, her eyes meeting mine. We’d planned this hike weeks ago, our first ever pre-sunrise hike. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. We’d to go to bed early on New Year’s Eve, wake at 2 o’clock in the morning to drive to the trailhead, and then climb a mountain to watch the first light of the new year greet us from the top. Now the whole thing seemed a bit terrifying.
As a child I’d been afraid of the dark, choosing to sleep with a nightlight well into my early twenties. I’d come to understand pretty early on in life that it wasn’t really the dark that was the problem; it was the potential that the dark contained. When you’ve been awoken in a panic, in total darkness, by someone who was in the process of causing you harm, you learn that the monsters are real after all. They’re just never what you expect.
I felt a tremor of apprehension move through me with a shudder as I hiked onward. “Left, right. Left, right” I thought to myself as we climbed. Every time I swept the beam of my headlamp across the trail ahead of me, I half expected to see another pair of eyes staring back at me, but the eyes never came. My heart was pounding hard, from both the exertion and my own hypervigilance, as we paused for a quick break. I peeled off a layer as my partner drank water. I always warmed up more quickly than she did, and a little while later we would stop again so she could do the same.
As we approached the open expanses of rock, where the trees started to look more like shrubs before they gave way to granite, a shiver ran down my spine. It was still so impossibly dark around us, consuming us, still and silent in the glittering snow, and the tiniest part of me wondered fleetingly if the sun really would rise, or if it would just stay dark like this forever.
Just for a moment, I felt the pain of all the other nights I’d wondered the same thing. The nights where my emotions had rocked me to my core, crashing to depths that I hadn’t known possible, where I felt nothing but the desolation of despair that let me believe that no one would care that much if I was gone anyway.
A few minutes later, we reached the peak. We tucked ourselves in against the scraggly, shoulder-high conifers, sipping hot cocoa, trying to find relief from the wind that whipped shards of snow across the open summit in front of us. I gazed in awe as the sky slowly turned from black, to the deepest shade of cobalt blue I’d ever seen. As the minutes passed, the smattering of stars faded. A gradient of oranges and yellows appeared, turning brighter and brighter at the horizon, before the sky gave way, pinks and purples illuminating the clouds above.
I stood and moved to the edge of the cliff to watch the sun peek over the mountains in the distance. I snapped a photo and was struck by how inevitably flawless this moment seemed, when only a few minutes before I’d wondered if it would even arrive. Just like those nights earlier in my life, where things had felt too dark to bear, the light had still returned. I just had to be patient enough to welcome it.
Meaghan is a backpacker and writer living in Maine with loved ones and pets. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok at @meaghan_adventures
Rising
By Anne Whiting & Sarah Grace Whiting
This piece is an original song with music, available to listen on Youtube
I stood upon the gray
Of a rock above the void
The desert night was silent
Stillness before the dawn
A single line of gold
Appeared where sky meets sand
The clouds turned pink beneath
A spreading glow moves on
A breeze upon my cheek with
A rustle in the leaves
A warmth dispelling the chill
And all the earth breathes
And all the earth breathes in
And all the earth breathes in
It’s rising
In colors and in hues
It’s rising
A day that is brand new
It’s rising
We are rising, too
The dark of night is washed away
We’re ready for another day
It’s rising
To shine the morning’s light
It’s rising
To bring us all to flight
It’s rising
It’s gonna be all right
A dawn bringing visibility
A breath full of possibility
A laugh shake off immobility
A shout born from persistency
A trail here in tangibility
A certain sign, our nobility
Rising
Rising Rising
Rising
Anne Whiting has been creating adventure opportunities through trail guides since 2010. She publishes her guides on her blog and in book form. When not dreaming up new trails, she likes to play music with her band and dabble in digital art and website development. Follow Anne’s past and present adventures on Facebook, MeWe, Patreon, and Instagram @viewjunkieanne
Shadow puppets
by Heidi Love
Fireflies glow
Logs crackle
Flames dance
Dark
Stars awaken
Crickets sing
Embers fade
Darker
Mist surrounds
Silence falls
Ash Cools
Darkest
Heidi is a camper and hiker living with loved ones and pets in South Florida.
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