A Synchronicity Series: Part 1, The Line

I’ve been experiencing synchronicity storms my whole life but didn’t have a name for what they were until a few years ago. I, a Leo moon, just joked that I must be the center of the universe because of all the absolutely wild connections I would discover I had to people and places.

And while that still may be true, it’s also true – and wonderful – that these synchronicity storms can be a magical burst of introspection and examination in anyone’s life.

Synchronicity 

Synchronicity is a Jungian concept, defined as a meaningful series of events that appear significantly related but have no causal connection.  

Even before I was familiar with the term, I knew the feeling that accompanies a synchronicity storm. It’s much like the euphoria of being a child with a balloon – batting it in the air, counting how many hits you get without it touching the ground. It’s the primal drive to maintain a tenuous connection with something fleeting – pursuit and connection and pursuit again. It activates your whole mind and body until at last the balloon touches the ground, and the experience abruptly ends.

My slap-in-the-face introduction to the word came from watching Hellier, and it was after watching the full two seasons that I experienced the first of what would become a series of rather mind-blowing synchronicity storms.

I’ll be documenting these in a series of posts, pulled from the notes I’ve made and stories I’ve shared over the past three years. 

The Line

This is the first synch storm, kicked off by the lines Karl was drawing on maps at the end of S2E5 of Hellier. I initially shared this information on the Museum Clubhouse Facebook Page on February 22, 2021.

The connections that piqued my interest

When I was watching Hellier, they mentioned two locations I’m familiar with – Stillwater and Long Prairie, both in Minnesota.

I have spent quite a bit of time in both of these cities – in fact, when I met my partner he was living in rural Stillwater, and growing up I had spent a lot of time with my dad visiting a classic Volvo junkyard up in Long Prairie.

I was actually driving a car from there when I met my partner. It was the 122s Wagon used in A Simple Plan. Paramount rented it from the guys at the yard, and I bought it a couple years later. (My butt sat where Bill Paxton’s sat, may he RIP.)

At the end of S2E5, Karl was drawing lines between locations of synchronicities and significant events, demonstrating how many of these events could be plotted on the same line. 

Also in that episode, they mentioned Pulaski County, where Somerset, KY is located. It rang a bell, so I pondered how I, having lived in Minnesota for the vast majority of my life, knew the name of a random place in Kentucky.

Then I remembered I had seen it on Ancestry.com. In the early 1800s ancestors of mine had passed through Pulaski County long enough to have family born and buried there before they moved on. My ancestor, and the progenitor of the family line that live in Somerset to this day, is buried in the cemetery in Science Hill.

Because I love maps and data plotting, I wondered what a line drawn between Science Hill and where I am now would pass through.

But then I decided to extend the line beyond my city and out to Fargo, ND – a place that is arguably highly strange in the high strangeness sense.

The place just has a vibe. Like, a serious vibe. My partner lived there and worked for a number of years, and has a lot of stories from that time. 

His job was at Trollwood School for the Performing Arts, which has since relocated – the original location is now a park. Prior to both of these things, it was the Cass County Hospital and pauper’s cemetery (which was not actually fully moved, and has for years been releasing bones to the river), right on the Red River on the border of Minnesota and North Dakota.

I drew a line connecting Trollwood Park (cemetery) in Fargo to the cemetery in Science Hill where my ancestor is buried. I had created a line that connected a place of high strangeness and significance to my partner with a place of high strangeness and significance to me, and this is when things started getting weird.

Drawn together

Note: My family has been highly mobile for at least two generations. My kids are the first on my side born in Minnesota. My partner and I grew up in communities roughly 100 miles apart.

As I reviewed the line I drew, I spotted a number of places that were significant to both of us. It passes through several of our ancestral homes.

In fact, it’s as if once our families came to America and crossed the Appalachians, a statistically significant number of them settled on the line continued to settle along it, sometimes bouncing East-to-West-and-back, in spite of it not following any waterways or roadways. 

All three of the houses we’ve bought, which when triangulated are roughly 150 miles apart from one another, all fall within 10-18 miles of the line. We bought two of those houses in towns where we didn’t have jobs or connections, but just seemed like good places to live.

The line passes through the property where the Minnesota Renaissance Festival is located, which is where my partner and I met for the first time– and still work to this day. The first time we laid eyes on each other was when we were standing in the lanes between the water wheel and the enormous Green Man statue. 

Through Minnesota, Iowa, the corner of Wisconsin, Indiana, and Kentucky we found place after place of significance to both of our families.

The only state where ancestors briefly settled that was nowhere near the line was in Illinois – where they settled in Pike County. The county bordering Hannibal, MO – which will come up in a future post. 

Doing the math

I like to check my work, especially when I feel that synchro-euphoria taking hold. I plotted every location of birth/death/marriage (where available) for our direct ancestors who lived west of the Appalachians, plus our current living family members. I wanted to make sure my “oh, wow!” was more than just me seeing things I wanted to see, and that it was statistically interesting.

Out of 

• 74 living and dead family members 
• Across 259 years 
• In 65 unique locations 
• Experiencing 101 unique life events 

west of the Appalachians, 30 locations (46%) and 51 (50.5%) events fall within 20 miles of the line. Of those 30 locations, the average distance from the line is 8.5 miles. Most locations are weighted to the first 400 miles of the 915 mile line.

For families who rarely spent more than the turn of one generation in a single spot, I am counting this as signfiicant. 

What Does All of This Mean?

Well… nothing? 

I don’t think synchronicities themselves mean anything, but they can be a neon thumbs-up sign from the Universe.

I don’t know that I believe in soul mates, but I DO believe that when you find what’s right, you KNOW it is RIGHT, and that’s how it was and always has been for my partner and myself. 

So, I guess that’s the take-away I’ll sit with. Somewhere in our DNA there seems to be a resonance with areas that fall along this line, and that resonance eventually led us to resonate with one another!