Hug Light

Have you ever found yourself running out of words? Like, speechless? And I don’t mean you’ve used them all up, simply out of words; nor do I mean this in the way that you might be daft or slow and simply can’t come up with more words. Although, how I mean this includes both definitions, but neither are entirely accurate. I mean that you’ve used them all up on something lesser. As in, you have no other words, or at the very least, no better words with which to describe adequately whatever might be unfolding in front of you…or within you.

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For example, as a kid in the 1980s, the words ‘radical’ and ‘totally awesome’ were used to describe things that were simply cool. I would use radical to describe my British Knights, my favorite boyhood pair of shoes. And then, I might use radical to describe a skate trick or a hockey goal. Sure, such words are fine for such banalities, but the trouble I am running into, now more than ever, is that I’ve squandered these words on something much lesser than for what they are meant to describe or convey. I’ve eroded away totally awesome’s bigness when I used it to describe my black and white high tops. Sure, these shoes were great, but incomparable to standing in the midst of a thunder storm with forks of light splattering about. Now, it’s used up, flimsy, dehydrated, no longer the word it could have been had I reserved it for the bigness it was meant to depict, the bigness I didn’t know that was yet to come.

Because of this I didn’t know there was a reason to save words, as if sacred, for the bigness they are meant to communicate. To that end, I’ve repeatedly squandered words on undeserving moments and things - beautiful, fantastic, stunning - to name a few. I’ve resorted reaching for bigger words. Wonderful makes a debut and I fiddle-faddle around with awesome again, trying to reclaim it’s original grandness. Then there are the exclamations. Oh my goodness! hand clasped over mouth with simultaneous big-eyes for dramatic effect. I’m also using Gaaaah! and Fuuuuuck! but whispered. These utterances, for me, occur irrespective of another human’s presence.

My friend, Nic, and I were sitting atop white-colored, brain-looking, bulbous knobs in the middle of White Pocket. The sun was setting, our cameras, now generally useless to this scene, were tucked into our bags for this last gasp of light. The sky turned that Blue Whale blue above and behind us, but with the most delightful gradient brightening to the pinks, oranges, and yellows gathering on the horizon. We are silent, still, our “Oooohs” and “Aaaahs” depleted after our compulsive, repetitive use while exploring this place. We’ve reached a saturation and wordless exhaustion. Our minds cannot comprehend one more drop of some staggering rock formation or blooming plant in the textured sand.

White Pocket in Hug Light

And it is here, in our quietness that Nic offers a hug. I’m not going to lie. It feels like the right thing to do, the necessary thing. We hug atop this knob bathed in golden light, looking down on all that surrounds us. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I have returned to that moment again and again. One, Nic is a really good hugger. Two, the moment demanded something more. We had used up all of our big words and it was as if our bodies craved to convey this beauty without trite words pulling down on this grand display. We were overwhelmed and sought contact with each other. I wonder if hugging is the natural language of this earth - where there is beauty we must seek out the embrace of another. I haven’t trialed this with complete strangers, but I’m not opposed to it.

Nic and I now refer to this moment as Hug Light, giving credit to that golden glow in that place for being so delicious that it forced us into physical contact. The moment was so big, so overwhelmingly stunning, bathed in so much golden light, that a hug was the only way to communicate the bigness we were experiencing together, on the insides of both of us.

Perhaps, no matter the availability of words saved for such big wonder, physical intimacy would still be a necessary outlet for such beauty. Perhaps words, despite my soapbox for wasting them on lesser moments, could never accurately convey these moments we share in the wild because of the wild.

I am more careful with my words now, reserving them for the bigness I keep bumping into out in the wilderness. And there is a possibility that more beauty is coming and I am simply squandering my words on what I think is magnificent now. Wonder might just work like that. Perhaps there is always more and we are always left scrounging around for words and ways to describe it. Perhaps that is why we write and write and write, trying to capture all that is big and beautiful around us. Perhaps, just maybe, wonder will always elude our description. And perhaps when all our words are exhausted, we hug, we kiss, we share a physical moment because wonder brings out the best in us and wishing us. Maybe this is a thing.