How off-season travel reveals the beauty in shadow and mystery

In off season travel, experiences are not how others have described it; places are not what it looks like in pictures. And that’s the great part lol.

The mists that obscure visibility of a vista invites you to scrutinize more closely, to observe from different vantage points, to fill in the blanks with imagination.

The cloudy weather makes light and shadow play, creating gradients of blue in the ocean and green on the looming mountains. You notice the rich textures of green moss and craggily black rocks—but a perfect summer day would have flatten the landscape.

Less than ideal circumstances prompt us to create unique relationships to our life experiences but perfect presentations/adhering to conventions prescribes a numbing consumption.

When things don’t turn out the way you want, can you taste the potential of playfulness? Or is it all you can do to swallow the disappointment? Does the taste of bittersweetness improve if you swish it in your mouth? What can you taste in the absence?

Ambiguous and inexplicable experiences haunt you— if you let it. Absence is not only a state of lack, but it can reveal presence. In the absence of stimulation, there becomes more space for contemplation.

Instead of constantly looking for answers, we should live out questions.

’I thought that life was a matter of figuring out the answers to questions, and that was that.
Now I’m learning that good answers lead to better questions .. and that the cycle never ends.’

It takes patience and bravery to master the judgment for blending what is beautiful with what is becoming.