North of Hope Quotes

“I wondered what those mountains behind them might tell me, what advice they would give, if they could talk. What they would tell me about love, and about loss, and about how this wild place could heal as naturally as it could kill.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“There is no greater intimacy than sitting with someone traversing that tenuous boundary between worlds, sitting vigil with a spirit trembling on the border, reaching toward the new and releasing the old.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“The line between the living and the dead may not be much of a line at all, but the terrain is not for the weak of heart.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“In this waiting, there is witness.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“Grief would weave itself among the threads of love and life and hope, and I was starting to believe that what came of it all would still one day be beautiful.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“Pain too much to handle also comes with exquisite beauty, as common as dirt, as unexpected as grace.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“Resurrection does not come without crucifixion, and you cannot celebrate Easter without living Good Friday.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“There is a time in each of our lives when we are hurled into the terrible understanding that bedrock can crumble in the blink of an eye.”
― Shannon Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“I will have to sit with this thing that weighs on me like a stone. I will have to work to will each breath for as long as it takes, though it feel like eternity. In this waiting, there is beauty, if I am willing to hear it. In this waiting, there is witness. But it is hard. I am not in control.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“If we are lucky, or careful, or daring, our lives are all about coming back to our senses.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“Someone has said that suffering stretches the heart, so that after it heals, it can hold more love. But I felt as though my heart were stretched to the breaking point.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“They were part of a web of humanity, and the web was torn, and those of us who are left all have to do the work of repair. Grief is something we claim with even a passing knowledge of someone, rocked by the finality of death in the intimacy of its implications. They are in our lives, and then they aren't.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“There was healing in the tyranny, and tyranny in the healing.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“What is known might sometimes sustain us, but what is unknown will save us.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“Are we meant to be pilgrims of the depths?”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“Suffering is a jealous and lonely state. It can't abide the company of anything else. It is greedy; it demands all of one's energies.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“Tracks were adumbrations of the energy of life all about us, the recent history book of wilderness.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey

“Honoring a life is honoring the wide open space of wilderness and unknowing where the sacred dwells.”
― Shannon Huffman Polson, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey