The Air Is Very Cold Here. See the Rest of the Pics in the First Comment… Full Story👇👇👇
The air is very cold here.
Not just in temperature, but in texture. It bites. It whispers. It wraps around your ribs like a memory you didn’t ask for. It’s the kind of cold that makes you feel small, but also strangely alive.
I didn’t expect it. I came here chasing something—maybe silence, maybe clarity, maybe just a change of scenery. I packed light. Linen shirts. A notebook. A camera. I thought I’d be warm enough.
I wasn’t.
👇👇👇 Full story below.
The first photo I posted was of the road—empty, winding, flanked by pine trees that looked like they’d been holding their breath for decades. The sky was bruised with cloud. My breath fogged the lens. I captioned it: “The air is very cold here.”
The comments came quickly. “Where are you?” “Are you okay?” “It looks beautiful.” I dropped the rest of the pics in the first comment.
Me, standing beside Clementine, my rust-freckled Datsun, parked crooked on a gravel shoulder. A close-up of Riot, my wild marigold, wrapped in a scarf I’d tied around the rearview mirror. A shot of my hand holding a ceramic mug, steam curling into the wind like a question.
Each photo was a mood. A moment. A breadcrumb.
Because this trip wasn’t about sightseeing. It was about remembering.
I came here because I needed to feel something different. Because the garden back home had gone quiet. Because Ophelia hadn’t bloomed in weeks. Because the motorcycle I named Echo sounded too much like regret.
I came here because I was tired of pretending I was fine.
And the cold didn’t ask me to be.
It just was.
It didn’t care about my backstory. It didn’t flinch when I cried. It didn’t offer comfort. But it offered clarity.
I walked through forests where the trees leaned like old men. I sat on rocks that had been warmed by sun and cooled by centuries. I wrote in my notebook with fingers stiff from frost. I drank coffee that tasted like survival.
And I took pictures.
Not for likes. For proof.
Proof that I showed up. That I didn’t turn back. That I let the cold do its work.
There’s a photo I didn’t post. Me, sitting on the hood of Clementine, wrapped in a blanket, staring at nothing. My eyes are red. My mouth is set. My posture says: I’m still here.
I almost deleted it. But then I thought—maybe someone else needs to see it. Needs to know that showing up doesn’t always look triumphant. Sometimes it looks like frostbite and fatigue and a face that forgot how to smile.
So I kept it.
Because this trip isn’t about perfection.
It’s about presence.
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The cold taught me things.
It taught me that silence isn’t empty—it’s full of echoes. That solitude isn’t loneliness—it’s space. That grief doesn’t melt—it crystallizes, sharp and beautiful.
It taught me that I don’t need to be warm to be whole.
And it reminded me that beauty isn’t always soft. Sometimes it’s jagged. Sometimes it’s freezing. Sometimes it’s the kind of air that makes you gasp.
I met a woman at a roadside café. She wore wool and wisdom. She asked why I was here. I said, “To feel something.” She nodded like she understood.
She gave me a scarf. Said it belonged to her brother, who used to drive through these mountains when he needed to think. I tied it to Clementine’s mirror. It fluttered in the wind like a flag.
I named the scarf Dusty June.
Because even in the cold, I’m still curating beauty.
Still naming things.
Still telling stories.
Even when my hands shake.
Even when the air is very cold.
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So scroll the comments. See the pics. Each one is a chapter. A confession. A celebration.
Of the person who didn’t turn back.
Of the car that carried me.
Of the scarf that fluttered.
Of the story that doesn’t need warmth to be meaningful.
Because the air is very cold here.
And I’m still breathing.
