In this exile I have chosen, where the compass spins alone, I descend from heights I’d conquered, leaving boulder, leaving stone. What was built with careful planning - home and hearth and polished life - Lies in ruins of my making, ego’s blade a sharpened knife.

The wanderer knows his freedom in the space between two breaths, In the Arctic wind that whispers of a thousand little deaths. Not the death of flesh and sinew, but of futures I once held, Of the loves I left behind me in the stories I once told.

There’s a strange joy in displacement, in this willful banishment, Finding truth in cold horizons, in my chosen abandonment. So I trade the weight of anchors for the lightness of the trail, Where the tundra stretches endless and the midnight sun turns pale.

I grieve the warmth of bodies that once curved against my own, The domestic constellation that I shattered, overthrown. Professional achievements crumble like the permafrost in spring, While I chase the fleeting seasons that these northern journeys bring.

There’s a violence in this choosing, in this turning from the shore, In the knowledge that these hiking years won’t knock upon my door Forever - time’s a hunter and my body bears its marks, But I’ll spend my strength on ridgelines while I still can brave the dark.

The pain and love wage warfare in this chest that holds my heart, Each memory a battlefield where end and beginning start. I am torn between tomorrows and the ghosts of what I’ve done, Between settling into shadows or still chasing midnight sun.

In philosophy of exile, we are strangers to ourselves, Authentic in our loneliness, our lives removed from shelves Of convention and convenience, of the paths we’re meant to take - I choose ice fields over wheat fields for my haunted conscience’ sake.

So I’ll walk these arctic passages while strength still fills my frame, A voluntary exile from the life that bore my name. In the clarity of solitude, beneath the endless sky, I am learning that in wandering, we find the truest “why.”