We smoked a joint before hopping into the hot springs about 60 miles East of our home in Fairbanks, Alaska. It’s 34 degrees below zero, February, and we’re outdoors in the pool with glowing strings of tube lights beneath our feet, green and red and blue, and we’re surrounded by huge rocks bordering the pool. Steam drifts into and around our nostrils, and then further up into the evergreens that tower above. The chill of a breeze drifts briefly by, freezing whatever water droplets are still stuck to the tips of our noses. My best friend is there with me and we’re 16. He’s telling me about how the Japanese travel to where we are just to conceive their children because it’s considered good luck to do so beneath the Aurora Borealis. I cock my head back and notice that it’s up there now, and in the dizziness of having a frozen brain and an overheated heart, the unbalance makes the light shimmer even brighter than usual. Iridescent, abalone colors wave like the flag of an alien nation over our heads, a beacon straight to our brains, calling us forward. Our hearts beating faster, pounding harder like drums in anticipation for something we’re not quite sure about, but it feels right, and good, and celebratory. And we are in a good place. It is 34 degrees below zero and we are in the very best place on Earth, and for that moment it seems, the cosmos.