Hummingbird, Sea Shacks and Snow Tracks
On Finding My Voice and Feeling it All
Finding my voice in a space like this hasn’t been easy so far. My first writing here, an investigative piece on national “Red Flag Laws,” flowed out of me like any late-night, coffee-fueled college essay. I was trained to do that type of analytical, linear writing as a literature student at Bowdoin, and in my western education generally.
My spirit has been yearning (at times whispering, at times shouting) for more public expression. But now that I have the platform, I feel unsure what to do with it. I’ve tried taking a major theme from my life, something that is currently ‘up for me,’ and packaging it up in a neat little post. But my life isn’t neat, and the themes knit together without a clear thesis.
I live a dream in which people, places, thoughts, and feelings mingle in the most unexpected ways and cannot be thematically separated. I don’t process information discretely like a computer. It all connects, and if I keep trying to bring you clean-cut, thematic newsletters I will surely quit. I read my many written and unpublished drafts over and think, “this is shit, shit, shit…”
The process of writing must be fun, because hey, I’m doing this for fun, right? If you can handle something a bit more ‘by the seat of the pants’ then stick around for more.
So, that Artic blast…am I right? While the waters of my youth pummel coastal Maine and wash away iconic fishing shacks from Willard Beach—don’t miss this video—Portland, Oregon has been in the midst of an ice storm and unusually cold temperatures for the region, dropping down into the teens at night for several days. I have been without water in my tiny home for seven days now but am fortunately still able to get water and shower at my landladies’ house.
My major disgruntlement has not been that I must trek while wearing nanospikes with baskets full of dirty dishes inside (okay, I do sound sort of salty about it), but that I broke my twelve-day cold plunge streak. I have been practicing cold water immersion for several years now, and in winter, I rely on it to keep my spirts high and my immunity boosted. My New Year’s Resolution was to take on a new challenge: 31 consecutive days of cold dipping. The cold plunge itself is a stainless steel, oval container that sits outside my front door and is large enough for me to climb in like one might a deep bathtub. I leave standing cold water in the tub overnight and in the morning it is generally in the 30’s or 40’s. Not an ice bath, but cold enough for a 3-5 minute immersion to pack a punch.
Well, now the bath is literally an ice bath. I woke up on Saturday to find the surface of the bath completely frozen over. Not deterred, I found a large rock from the garden and started smashing it against the ice sheet. I did make some progress until I lost my grip on the icy rock, and it plummeted to the bottom of the bath. After several attempts to retrieve it, reaching my freezing hands through jagged ice chunks and soaking up to my armpits, I decided to tap out. In the PNW, surely, I would be back to bathing in a couple of days, but to my chagrin we are still living under these conditions a week later, warmer weather having stalled out around the coastal range.
This frustration about my New Year’s goals has been eclipsed by a much more serious concern that my daily companion, Anna, may not survive this weather much longer. Let me explain…Anna is an Anna’s Hummingbird (because I name animals like a four-year-old). She is well within her native range here. Normally Anna would have a reasonable expectation of a mild but rainy winter. I couldn’t understand why she would favor our homestead so heavily until realized that our neighbors have a hummingbird feeder, without which I don’t think she would still be alive. She perches in the tall bush right outside my front door where she has loitered long enough for me to see her preen, poop, and stretch her amazingly long tongue in and out of her amazingly long beak. She has become increasingly tolerant of my proximity as temperatures drop. I suspect she is conserving calories.
I got out the camera that is slightly nicer than my iPhone for this one. What do you think? I feel so intimately connected with her struggle, an uneasy tightness in my gut, imagining that I could wake up and find that Anna is no longer outside my front door. After so many months, and hundreds of sightings, I know that if Anna is suddenly gone it would mean that she is dead. I will most certainly keep you posted.
While I worry about Anna, I do love the way the ice makes everything fresh and interesting. When I look out at the frozen world I realize how little attention I normally give to shape and color. The new contours of familiar plants and objects make them suddenly captivating. I can almost feel my brain forming synapses rapid-fire like water molecules freezing into icicles. So this is what the watering can, the picnic table, and the Japanese maple look like covered in ice, I think. The variety has broken my brain open and I’m seeing the world with the eyes of a child. It’s all candy, and somehow I can’t stop sticking frozen leaves in my mouth.
Freezing rain in Portland translates to snow on Mt. Hood. This week I snuck into the mountains to taste some powder! I’ve been working through an exacerbation of low back pain recently. I made the sensible decision to call it early before skinning as far as planned, knowing that if I pushed it I might—there is no polite way to say this—truly fuck myself up. Practicing that kind of restraint is new for me. The environment was so magical, it was difficult to choose to ski down and drive up to Timberline Lodge rather than reach it on skis as planned. But as I stood and looked out at Mt. Jefferson and beyond, a calm settled over me that I haven’t felt in recent memory.
At home after skiing, I laid stretching on my futon and felt profound grief emanating from my chest. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was all about. Certainly, I was frustrated that my body does not currently afford me the level of freedom that I desire. Was that all? Climate grief was there too. I feel connected to the storm at ‘home’ but in actuality am removed by thousands of miles from those flooded coastlines. In our social media age, witnessing reels of destruction without feeling the hurricane force winds in my bones felt wrong. I dream about moving back home one day, but will it even be for safe to do so?
For a few brief hours I had felt completely at peace in a white, snowy environment, a blank slate in which anything is possible. Returning to civilization felt tender; if only I could be a Clark’s Nutcracker and live at the top of a snow-capped volcano for the rest of my life. But then, something shifted. I had allowed the grief in and now it had gone, as suddenly and totally as it had come.
Introducing: My Favorites Postscript
What’s Going On In There? Episode of This American Life. This podcast relates directly to my work but could be interesting to anyone who wants to get inside the head of a teen trying to leave a toxic relationship.
The Swimmers Official Trailer. Tear-jerker, unsettling. Syrian athletes struggle to escape war without abandoning their Olympic dreams. Based on a true story.
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Utopian/dystopian novel that really made me ask myself, do I possess my things or do they possess me? And does this relationship to property corrupt every human relationship I have?
I recently discovered Kanopy, a streaming service that you can connect to for free with your local library card. Ah, public libraries…the last great institution. They almost seem like something from a bygone era at this point in our neo-capitalist spiral.
Lingopie is my new favorite toy. This is a paid language-learning streaming service. Watch, for example, Italian cinema subtitled in both Italian and English simultaneously. While watching you may click on unfamiliar words and add them to your vocab list to be quizzed on later. I sound like these people are paying me, but no, I’m actually willing to pay them for this, and trust me, I’m stingy.
The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent by Betty Martin, D.C. Um, more of this please. If you want to get super heady about touch, communication, and pleasure, look no further.
Thank you for reading this week. I have a request to make. This is still a new and vulnerable venture for me, and I would love to see it grow. Would you consider sharing this newsletter with three people you think might specifically enjoy it?
This content is free, but you can always buy me a coffee. Cheers!
Lovely piece. Thoughtful and insightful.