September 2024. For our 14th anniversary, we planned a fairly spontaneous trip to an island I've wanted to visit since we moved to Maine: Grand Manan. It lives in Canadian waters, but is actually due east off the coast of Maine, so to get there, we drove north into Canada, stopped a few days at a small town called St Andrews (which was a bit disappointing to us), and then took a ferry down for about 90 minutes to the island. The island itself feels fairly big, at over 20 miles long and abo…
As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm on a tear to post about the last year here. It has piled up to topplin'! And I wrote this post about 8 months ago and never posted, so going to get to it now. April 2024: Right now, Maine smells like nearly-black soil, a dark salty whiff that emerges along the roadsides when the soil starts to soften each spring, along with the funk of skunk cabbages pushing through the marshy culverts. I'm holding my breath for the lilacs, which will, will, will come. Th…
For months now, words have felt as flimsy and as distant as a flake of snow across the harbor. I can't find the right ones, and even looking for them hurts my tired eyes. And was it even snowing? Months my body has been knitting that energy into a baby ball that seems to inflate daily, or perhaps more accurately, within the nights that feel long and less restful than I'm used to, waking knowing I will wake again and again. But today, the urge came into my fingers so strongly to come back to writ…