Letter from the Editor

In this last year, we have missed.

We’ve missed the big things— weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, funerals— all of life’s moments and celebrations and in-betweens.

But there’s been the small things, too. Running into a friend you haven’t seen in a while at the local coffee shop, hugging as you catch up. Dancing together at the farmer’s market, sharing shelter from the rain with a stranger, standing shoulder to shoulder at a concert. Everything can be missed— there is no prerequisite for missing. You can miss your family, and you can miss the smell of a friend’s home.

This last year has been three years long. But here we are, now, that much closer to filling all those cracks with gold. The weddings will be even happier, the concerts louder, the funerals kinder, the graduations more bittersweet. Separation creates space for longing, and we’ve longed a long while. Soon enough, all of that longing will burst out like wildflowers. Spilling down from the alpine forests, down into the beds of the valley, floating on the wind of the prairie, drifting down the river. A world covered in flowers.

We will be together again. We have always been together, even when we’ve felt miles and worlds apart, in all the small ways. I believe that someone, in some way, can sense when you think about them. Even if you don’t call or text or send a letter— it shows up in other ways. You see each other in the world. Maybe it’s a book you’re reading or a song you hear on the radio, trees turning in the fall or the first robins of spring, the shade of lilac the mountains turn at dusk, dewdrops on fresh grass at dawn. You may not realize it in the moment, and they might not either, but it’s all connected by an invisible cat’s cradle. Pull on one thread and move another.

Like the roots of an aspen grove, we’re together— even when we feel apart.