Celebrations are meant to remind us of some important truth that we may have forgotten the rest of the year, caught up in our little human thoughts. And so I wonder what it would mean to celebrate this time of year as a counter-cultural moment — to remember what it is to really live. In such a rationalizing, productivity-focused culture, could my celebration of the darkest month also be the celebration of the uncontrollable, unclean animals of our bodies?

That’s the thing about travel recently. I’ve got this sneaking suspicion that too many people use “travel” as a means to claim they’ve done something interesting or courageous without really having to do anything at all.

I’d been waiting all day to listen to this episode and with a little snow falling down through the night sky, making confetti under the orange sodium streetlights, I couldn’t have been more content. And the story from David Sedaris? Absolutely perfect. I sat there, the space heater burning a black line into the synthetic blanket, a pine-scented Christmas candle masking the smell of melting plastic, having a sort of knowing that I’d just created a memory, something I’d look back on for years and years.

There is a way in which canyoneering is beautiful — the body pressed, held by the earth as you slide through something not dissimilar to a birth canal. Your shoulders and hips wedge as you inch your way between the walls which threaten to either press you flat, trapping your body forever between the stone, or conversely, drop you down a great chasm that opens with such speed and force you have to wish, at least a little, that you were more liquid than solid.