Why I Write, 02: Shelter From the Storm
"Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine."
There's a day I remember well from last summer in the Adirondacks. Like many mountainous places, the Adirondacks possess their own weather system, unpredictable and feisty. They can give you ten straight days of rain or a 30-minute downpour that folds over to reveal the most deliriously blue day you've ever seen. You never quite know; it's all part of the mountain magic.
Still, people try to predict the weather, and that day, the iPhone weather gods declared the worst: rain, thunder, lightning, apocalypse. There would be no swimming. No hiking. No reading on an Adirondack chair.
My boyfriend, Noah, and I were there for three days, and this was our last. I had work to do, but it was his birthday, and he fully intended to chase a peak. Rain be damned. This made me nervous, of course, but he promised that he would turn back if the sky started to look (more) malevolent. He set off, and I stayed inside of the lodge, computer in my lap. The rain walloped the lake outside.
I remembered that moment today, a moment when I wasn’t sure if the storm would break or rage.
For the last week, I've been sitting with the fear and uncertainty gripping the journalism world. I’m a freelancer who hasn’t been affected by the layoffs, and yet, I feel the ripple effects of the changing industry in my own work. Less pay. Less assignments. Less of the transformative stories that made me fall in love with reporting in the first place.
I feel dour about this. I'm looking out the window, and all I see are clouds cloaked over the horizon. Clouds that are actually AI and budget cuts and the deflation of the written word. I’ve spent far too long speculating about what the journalists will be reckoning with in one year, five years, ten years. But ultimately, it’s mountain rules, and none of us know what f*ck happens next.
And yet (there’s always an “and yet”), I have this, the creative writing that I do just for me. This writing that feels like ducking under a canopy in a downpour.
This week, I finished the first draft of the first chapter of my new novel. It was early in the morning, and there were two cats on my lap, and I thought about how lucky I am to have this counterpoint in my life, this thing that feels uniquely mine and uniquely precious. A dense green canopy all of my own.
Sometimes the outside world leaks down on me in large drops, but I’m mostly dry. Mostly taken care of here in my imagination.
On our last day in the Adirondacks, the storm did subside—at least for a while. It was windy but just warm enough for a swim, so I put my laptop aside. I ran into the water.
A few minutes later, Noah emerged on the rocky beach. He’d made it! In one piece!
Together, we enjoyed the sunshine poking in and out of the gray clouds. It wasn’t a relaxing swim, exactly. If I committed to the flailing I call “laps,” I could just keep my shivering at bay.
There was an ecstasy to the swim, the kind that comes from having something good that just won’t last. Soon the weather shifted again. The sky darkened and we sprinted for our towels.
It poured the whole drive home. I still had lake water in my hair. I looked out the car window and saw the towns of upstate New York pass by—churches and houses and markets. Through the rain, stories appeared. Who lives here? I thought. What worries them? What moves them?
What’s the weather like?
Reading: Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino
Writing: Something new
Watching: True Detective
Eating: Pizza from almost-scratch
This newsletter is written and edited by me, so please excuse the occasional grammatical error or spelling gaffe. My Very Talented Mother, Caitilin McPhillips, designed my logo for me. Thanks, Mom.