I used to find myself torn between two worlds…
One with crashing waves and briny ocean air, and the other filled with quiet lakes, rugged cliffs, and sprawling boreal forests.
Growing up by the coast, the ocean was just part of daily life.
She was always there, through family vacations and weekend fishing or camping trips. Somehow, despite my lack of her awareness, the Atlantic taught me to let go, find calm in the chaos, and roll with change.
When I left for Minnesota, I felt her absence more acutely than I expected. I didn’t realize how deeply I missed her until she wasn’t there anymore.
I wish I hadn’t taken her presence for granted.
The landscape of the Upper Midwest was sooo different.
No sound side, no salt in the air, no familiar sound of waves folding back into themselves… In its place were trees, frozen winters, inland waters, and a different kind of beauty that took longer for me to understand.
At first, it felt awkward.
I missed the coast with an ache that sat just beneath everything else. I missed the nearness of her and my ability to run to her when the world was heavy.
And I felt guilty for feeling it.
I did not feel guilty for not missing the humidity.
Minnesota was beautiful, but not yet mine, and I was struggling to acclimate because I didn’t know how to listen, yet.
But little by little, I began to notice what this place was offering me.
The hush of the woods.
The rustle of leaves in Summer.
The stillness of lakes at dusk.
The dramatic cliffs of the North Shore.
The boreal forest pressing close around Lake Superior.
The way the light shifts here in Autumn, setting the forest on fire.
None of it was the ocean, but the forests and lakes began to reach me in a familiar place, offering the same solace I had once sought by the sea. I noticed varieties of flowers and trees I’d never seen before, and found plentiful green spaces where I could enjoy time openly in the elements.
I stopped looking for the coast inside the forest and started meeting this landscape on its own terms. Once I did, I found myself drawn into a wonderfully different kind of relationship with the natural world.
And that’s when it started shifting for me.
They were never opposites in the way I thought they were – they were simply two expressions of the same truth.
The ocean will always be a part of me.
She still lives deep in my body, in the place where salt air always feels like a homecoming and sunrises on wide, open horizons are what wake me in the mornings.
But the boreal forests have made a place in me, too.
So have the lakes, and the auroras that dance across the northern sky. So has the hush of snow, the smell of pine, and the roar of waterfalls in the rugged, fierce beauty of a place that once felt unfamiliar.
I don’t feel torn between them anymore, because I was never meant to choose.
I only have to remain open enough to let them keep teaching me.