Hi hunnies!
It’s 36° today in Denver, and this warm-blooded hummingbird (...me) is chilly! If I can start by replaying a sentiment I vibed with from Alison Roman in recent days and “just say congratulations to anyone writing this week, anyone publishing any sort of creative work or anyone who’s just getting up to do their jobs, whatever they may be.” That’s where I’m at. How are you?
(On that note: is anyone else working on writing projects? Writing is a famously solitary endeavor, and if you’re doing it, I want to hear more about what, and how. Hit me up.)
Treasures from your last dispatches: a movie-quality double rainbow over the Inner Sunset of San Francisco, a window overlooking an Argentinian parrilla, and the deeply satisfying work of evaluating major land proposals for the National Park Service. I love you, my creative, beautiful friends.
Choice, comfort, and a tiny rug
An Airbnb near North Denver’s Tennyson Street has been home for Mike & I this month, and we’ll stay until mid-February before getting back on the road again. So, we’re here: unfolding ourselves into another new place with yet another on the horizon.
Before we went full nomad in June, I felt anxious about cloistering most of my possessions in boxes; about what it would mean to lack a familiar space to return to after a long journey. I thought about how much I value corporeal comfort (what if our next house is freezing, and I don’t have a blanket to wrap myself in on the couch?) and choice (what if I get invited to a “Rosie the Riveter”-themed Zoom party and don’t have my vintage coveralls to wear for the occasion?!).
After packing up, unpacking, re-packing and unpacking again so many times, I’ve been surprised at my own changing conceptions of home: is it a physical space? A mindset? What, in our constant need to mark our territory, matters most?
I’ve found that I don’t miss the choice as much as I thought I would, and, ironically, find comfort in wearing the same purple sweatsuit (IYKYK) and tie-dyed t-shirt each week. It’s like I’ve fast-tracked the building of my relationships with these garments, imbuing them with more meaning (and butter stains) with each wear. (Don’t worry though—I know my way around a bottle of stain-stick, so the butter doesn’t last long.)
I also find myself pursuing choice and novelty in other ways (see: cooking, and more cooking). Comfort, on the other hand, remains a priority, but I’ve found ways to bring it with me in ways I didn’t expect. For example, I’ve carried a tiny, woven rug (sure, call it a “coaster” if you must) with me since New Mexico, and I work it into my routine wherever I can. On the road, it’s home for my coffee mug on my makeshift desk, and is now living a second life as part of my meditation altar. You go, tiny rug!
The quiet beauty of ice fishing
Have you ever trekked out onto a deeply-frozen lake, drilled a hole, and spent the day training your mind’s eye on the fish swimming imperceptibly beneath you? As previously mentioned, I’m not, as they say, a “fan” of the cold. But I am a fan of anything contemplative that also involves Coors Light, so when my cousins mentioned plans to go ice fishing, I was like, please hold while I borrow some fleece pants.
We made it out onto the ice while the moon was still high in the morning sky, casting its blue across the sprawling frost of Lake Granby. Hauling orange sleds with gear behind us, we staked a spot, shoveled a patch, and drilled four perfectly-round holes into 8-inch-thick bubbly green ice. We sat for hours as the sun rose above the mountains, the four of us swapping spots between our small 2-person tent and two camping chairs under the sky.
My cousin taught us how to drop our lines into the freeze, letting them unravel in spirals until we felt a faraway thud (the bottom). Then you reel in just a bit, and jig (bob your line up and down) to catch a fish’s attention. The whole process is so slow, so gentle; your attention fixated on the way the ice layers, sturdy and clovered, or on the lap of the water against the lip of the hole.
But there’s a mystic thrill that underlies it all: at any moment, life could leap from underneath where you’re staring and something totally explosive could happen. And it did—in an exhilarating moment of energy, my cousin caught a green and shimmering mackinaw, and we yawped across the ice in celebration.
We endured the wind for a few more hours, bolstered by a Coors run to memorialize the catch, and, once home, fried the filets in the cast-iron and served it with dollops of lemon-chive butter. The beauty of the ice, the uninterrupted time with Mike and with my cousins; it all felt sublime.
Joy blaaaast
What is bringing you joy as our strange days keep rumbling? For me: when Abbie Hoffman, American political activist, said during the Trial of the Chicago Seven (a must-watch):
“In 1861, Lincoln said in his inaugural address: ‘When the people shall grow weary of their constitutional right to amend their government, they shall exert their revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow their government.”
“So, how” (he was then asked), “do you overthrow or dismember, as you say, your government peacefully?”
“In this country,” (he answered), “we do it every four years.”
❗❗❗ We have a new administration in the White House—f*ck yeah.
What I’m reading, cooking, or listening to
The Dream, an investigative podcast on MLMs (ie, multi-level marketing companies like Amway and the LuLaRoe legging empire), described in this Vulture review as a “a vibrant and sustained inquiry into various systems of capitalist exploitation.”
1. Sue me; I have a type right now!
2. If you listen to this (or have), pls hit me up so we can discuss.
Anne Helen Peterson on working through a coup (felt the seen-est)
And, cooking: we’re back, baby! We made oysters on the grill for the Bills vs. Colts game, lavished with hot-sauce butter and so much lemon. If you can get your hands on some oysters right now, make. these.
Amongst my other culinary experiments, I also recommend this nutty, perfectly-textured mushroom wellington, this totally fancy but shockingly-simple salmon with chile, orange, and mint butter, and these North Dakotan pretzels that I bought from Safeway.
A poem-share
The beginning of 2021 ushers in a continued exercise in doing what we’ve always known to be true but desperately pretended wasn’t, until COVID: living and choosing and deciding in the face of constant uncertainty. My Dead Friends, by Marie Howe, moved me this week as I traveled my familiar cycle of overwhelm at all there is to do, to decide on, followed by the terrifying and then comforting realization that there is no right answer to our most bewildering questions, anyway.
I have begun,
when I’m weary and can’t decided an answer to a bewildering question
to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.
Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?
They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,
to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy’s ashes were —
it’s green in there, a green vase,
and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,
whatever he says, I’ll do.
What have you been ruminating on this January? Which decisions, big or small? Anything hilarious happen? I wanna know!
Sending big love,
Becca
See the archive of these letters here, and unsubscribe from them here.
Woah, you went snowshoeing! How was it? We have vague plans to try it this winter.
Your anxieties are the very things that have prevented me from trying the nomad life during COVID - liking the familiarity of my house, the space, the backyard. And I really dislike packing, unpacking, moving, and carrying things.
At the same time, I have weirdly enjoyed some of the novelties imposed by COVID life. We started ordering a lot more grocery / takeout delivery at the start of the pandemic and probably now we'll never stop. We got better at hanging out over Zoom with close friends who lived far away. Without the pandemic, I probably never would have picked up backpacking or writing as a hobby.
Woah, you went snowshoeing! How was it? We have vague plans to try it this winter.
Your anxieties are the very things that have prevented me from trying the nomad life during COVID - liking the familiarity of my house, the space, the backyard. And I really dislike packing, unpacking, moving, and carrying things.
At the same time, I have weirdly enjoyed some of the novelties imposed by COVID life. We started ordering a lot more grocery / takeout delivery at the start of the pandemic and probably now we'll never stop. We got better at hanging out over Zoom with close friends who lived far away. Without the pandemic, I probably never would have picked up backpacking or writing as a hobby.