“Modern man likes to think that he is thinking wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason. When we emerge, perhaps we will realize that we have been dreaming with our eyes open, and that the dreams of reason are intolerable. And then, perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed.”

– Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude

I start 2026 on the Northwoods ski trail outside Silver Bay. Conditions are poor: the snow is icy crust, the trail littered with debris. The trail to Palisade Valley, the greatest of Northland skis, is ungroomed and overgrown. No matter. There is nowhere else I’d rather be.

I follow someone else’s tracks on the ungroomed trail to Bean Lake, where I sit on a log for a minute. The grey clouds open up in a circle over the lake, a dreamy baby blue; an eagle glides the length of the lake and pauses overhead. Sunlight filters through, makes the lake’s floor and walls glitter. It splashes across my notebook page, a pulse of warmth on a single-digit day. I think back on past visits to this lake, drift into a realm of dreams.

What do you get when you strip away all the rationalizations, dip into those deeper corners of the psyche? I defend much of what civilization has given us, its incredible progress and smoothed rough edges off our greatest extremes. But there is a dialectic here, an ear willing to listen for the tune of things. Feel the more primal urges, the pull of the wilderness, the desire for communion.

It comes out in rootedness to the land; the instinct that will drive me into a grotto along a plunging stream or out into a cathedral of pines or along these silent white trails, a drift out of linear time and into the rhythms and cycles that are at once more opaque and more meaningful. It comes in a hunger for the language of faith, not because I am deeply devout but because I think we chop off some fundamental piece of the human experience when we cannot go there, get left with fairy tales and happily ever after pablum (or, worse yet, defeated resignation) instead of the full triumph and tragedy of humanity. We can construct a rational vision of a future with a career and a credential checklist and a house and even a lifestyle and some idealized family life, but a mission-driven push toward that eyes-open rational dream loses some ability to trust the waves, cannot quite lose itself in deeper communion with an awesome external force. True rootedness, true vocation, true love: the source of their strength is somewhere in here.

In 2026, I will trust the pull into parts unknown. Quit the scrolls, touch grass (or snow) and chase deep into the places where the pinging device cannot dictate action. Stay out for that extra conversation, that last drink at the end of the night. Let the eyes wander, ask questions, try out new ways of moving through and find people who share that intensity.

I have only ever been an intermittent dreamer. Rarely do I remember much. But when I do it almost always brings a warm glow, usually some pulse of youthful intensity, one with some kid who breaks down the barriers of his reserve and finds his flow state, his pace. Dreams may not be reality, but sometimes they tell us more about the true nature of things than a lifetime of careful calculations ever could. My belief has never been deeper.