The Sharp Edge of Air

The smell of frozen pine needles always brings me back to the feeling of a sudden, sharp intake of breath. It is a cold that bites at the edges of your nostrils, a dry, stinging sensation that makes your lungs feel like they are expanding against a wall of ice. I remember the sound of boots crunching through a crust of snow—a rhythmic, hollow snap that vibrates up through the soles of your feet and settles in your marrow. There is a specific, heavy silence that follows a jump, the kind where the world holds its breath, waiting for the inevitable return to gravity. It is the feeling of being untethered, a brief, terrifying suspension where your stomach rises into your throat and your skin prickles with the static of the wind. We spend our lives trying to stay grounded, yet we are always secretly craving that moment of weightlessness, that split second where the body forgets it is made of bone and blood. If we could stay in the air forever, would we ever learn to land?

Benjamin Lee has captured this exact suspension in his work titled Truck Driver. The way he has frozen that moment of flight makes me feel the bite of the mountain air on my own cheeks. Does the stillness of the image make you want to leap, or does it make you want to find solid ground?