Letter from the Editor

These words rolled around my brain like marbles in a tin can for a while. Just constantly rattling, echoing, finding their way back at the front of my subconscious— the synchronicity of it all. That somehow we have all managed to exist now, which is a feat in and of itself; that everyone you know has managed to be here, at the same time and place as you.

How wonderful that you are here now.

One of my favorite things about summer (which I’m now sincerely missing in this subzero February in a grey Flathead Valley) is stargazing. The best kind is at the end of a bonfire, when everything smells like smoke and the only light left is a rolling amber glow. I can remember the first time I went stargazing in Montana, what it felt like to actually see the Milky Way. It’s beautiful and terrifying, you simultaneously feel so big and so small. There are so many stars, the night stretches on for longer than you can even fathom, there’s so much out there that we don’t even know about. The magnitude of what we will never know.

But, cosmically speaking, from our perspective, our existence is more rare than a sky full of stars— if you’ve been in Montana at night you know that the stars are endless. But despite the sheer magnitude of it all and how easy it is to feel small, your act of just existing is radical. There’s nothing else like it. You being you is a remarkable thing, because you’re here. You are here now, reading these letters on this paper in this magazine. Maybe it’s fate, maybe it’s chance, but it’s a beautiful thing nonetheless.

So, thank you for being here. From me, from the people you love, from the people you will someday meet, from the sky and all her stars.