Landscape of Dreams

Alaska: The word itself is beautiful, the idea of it too vast and faceted to be easily held. Alaska: largest of states, and in some ways the most varied, from shadowy rain forest to the most frigid, light-filled tundra. In my mid-20s, at a time when nothing was certain for me—indeed, when my I-can-do-anything bravado was crumbling—I had a dream about Alaska: a sky-blue sparkling landscape, a place of many colors, more beautiful than any I’d seen. Of tall, snowy peaks; of slanted sunlight and the clearest lakes; of vast meadows of wildflowers.

         I awoke dazzled.

         There was no question beyond when I would go. The timing was tricky, because I had what was considered a good job at a newspaper in Oregon, a position I’d worked hard to win. The pay was generous, the schedule relentless. To my dismay, I neither liked nor excelled at the work. So I kept my head down and saved money. When I had what I thought was enough, I quit the job, drove to Seattle, and caught a ferry north. I left my car with friends, figuring I’d improvise when I reached the end of the ferry line.

         “Improvising” turned out to be hitch-hiking. On the ferry from Vancouver Island, I met a feisty German woman with laughing blue eyes who went by the nickname Mausie, and we decided to travel together. Standing on the road shoulder alongside her, I felt much safer. Mausie had no such fears. She’d explored much of the world with her thumb.

         We hopped ferries as far as Skagway, threading through the islands of southeast Alaska, pausing on any whim. Most days were cloudy with spitting rain, the mountains appearing and disappearing like ghosts. North up the Klondike Highway, where mists closed thickly around us. “I sure wish you girls could see the mountains we’re passing,” lamented the kind truck driver who’d picked us up. I tried hard to envision them rising in every direction.

He let us out at Tok Junction, a sparsely traveled crossroads known as a brick wall for hitchhikers. But we were two women; it took us only four hours to snag a ride. Men waiting with thumbs out glared at us. We rode southwest, passed quickly through Anchorage, and turned toward the beautifully green, off-and-on rainy Kenai Peninsula, where I had a friend from school. North again to Denali National Park and patchy gray weather. The mountain revealed itself briefly on the summer solstice, more spreading and lovely than any peak I’d ever seen.

         But where was the beautifully lit landscape of my dream, and the stretching fields of wildflowers? I had fun traveling Alaska, yes, and a sense of accomplishment for having struck out on my own. Still, sitting around a fire one night, when another camper said, “You should come back in autumn. It’s drier and the wildflowers are amazing!” my spirit gave a small, sad cry.

         What is it about the places we hold dear that nourishes us and makes our souls sing? For me it’s the sense of being slapped alive by the beauty of the landscape. Many people find verve in cities, but I’ve always sought out natural places.

Decades ago on Hatteras Island and the North Carolina Outer Banks, I believed I’d found the natural and spiritual home where I’d live out my life. Climate change and overdevelopment derailed that plan. Now we have a new home in Maine, in a community that has graciously embraced us. These past pandemic years I’ve come to better understand the sentiment of a writer friend who’s given up travel, who’s content to stay close to his home landscape in northern New York.

Still, the restlessness I keep thinking I’ve killed off has a way of reasserting itself.

         “You should come back in winter.” I couldn’t help remembering the words of a colleague in Anchorage, where I was teaching summers at the university.

         “Really?” I’d responded. The idea of winter there, with its relentless darkness, was daunting.

         “Come in March. There’s more light, and the snow is amazing.”

That was in 2019. Alaska in March: The idea echoed through my mind that autumn and early winter, until the global pandemic silenced it. A few months ago I found an opening: a plane ticket I could afford and a trio of friends happy to host me. So in early March I again boarded the ferry from Juneau to Skagway, retracing the first part of my route with Mausie.

The waters of the fjord were rough that day. Steep waves stirred up by north winds collided with the ferry, making it something of a dance exercise to walk to my seat. But the skies were clear, the snow-covered mountains fully in view. They rose straight out of the water, lining the eastern and western horizons. More snowy peaks awaited in the north. Through the ferry’s large windows I could see them all.

There were few other passengers on this cool, late winter day. A couple of women at a table laying out a jigsaw puzzle. A man stretched out in a sleeping bag. A group of Natives of varying ages. I relaxed into my seat as steep white mountains slid by on both sides. I imagined the precipitous plunge of their slopes beneath the ocean surface.

The Native kids were full of energy. Several adolescent boys threw open a side door and tried to fight their way forward to the open viewing deck on the bow. The wind had other ideas. Its force distorted their faces; they scrunched their eyes and pressed on, mugging comically for those of us in the cabin. One boy opened his coat and let himself be blown backwards along the side deck. Watching from inside, a little girl with pink footie pajamas and worshipful eyes ran to the window, laughing and waving to get his attention.

These kids were of the Tlingit tribe, which holds ancestral lands here, and they were well accustomed to the bright mountains we passed, with their rocky shoulders sliding toward the water. Snow-covered peaks above a beard-like covering of forest. Treeless white strips that showed old avalanche routes. There is a way of seeing a landscape in which you know exactly how the pieces fit together. I had that understanding on the Outer Banks, a much smaller tableau. I wondered how many of these kids would come to have it here. I hoped they all would.

The mountains slid by, and by. Even the rough waves couldn’t shake my feeling of being suspended in time. Six hours later, when we reached Skagway, I gathered my things and left the boat as if awakening for the first time that day.

 Wonderful times followed: a trip with a friend to a small town in British Columbia, where the temperatures dropped to -25 F one night and the days were barely above zero. We stayed in a simple cabin, woodstove heat only; no indoor plumbing. Outside I was careful to cover my nose and mouth and to wear gloves, especially whenever I touched something metal. The threat to my skin felt slightly existential. But, oh, the crystalline clarity of the air! I felt as if I could see forever. We walked along a mostly frozen river and skied on a lake overlooked by mountains as high and snow-covered as any I’ve seen. With no wind and great gear, the temperatures were manageable. When the thermometer climbed to zero, we began shedding clothes.

I floated through the days, aware that they were too short but lengthening them by enjoying each moment. It felt a little like magic, like smoothly walking a balance beam knowing that at any moment I could topple off—but also knowing I would not.

Back in Juneau, two other friends and I hiked and kayaked along the rocky, forest-lined coast. We bought a king crab right off a fishing boat and drove past high rise buildings slam up against mountain cliffs. At my request we visited the Mendenhall Glacier. When I’d last visited the glacier in 1980, it had truly seemed like a river of ice, its front face a glaze of snow and dirt and rocks. It filled the river valley and towered over me. Here and there depressions revealed a core of glowing, electric blue. What I found this time was as third as wide, almost a half mile farther back, and clearly dying. Before turning away from it, I said a small prayer of apology.

There were, of course, no wildflowers. I didn’t miss them.

I found the landscape of my dream, and it was not just scenery. I know now that Alaska would never have revealed itself to me on its own. It did so thanks to my friends, all with deep ties to their home. They helped me glimpse its heart. It in turn glimpsed mine, changing me in a small but profound way. It kindled a glow within me that I feel even now as I move again through my daily life, here in pastoral Maine.

I close my eyes and see snow-covered mountains: rocky jumbles, merengue tops, cleaved white faces, long ridges running down to a wave-ruffled fjord. The tracks of my skis as I glide along a frozen lake, circling an island beneath snowy behemoths. A little girl in pink footie pajamas, laughing at her brother who’s outside on the deck, jousting against the wind.

Three Tempests

A tidal surge at Greenhead Lobsters in Stonington, Maine, in January. Click here for a video of the tide’s quick rise. Boston Globe image, provided by Greenhead Lobsters

The storms—all three of them— drifted along what was at first a novel route, then a frighteningly familiar one. An unusual wave in the jet stream helped spin them up and toss them off like meteorological cannon fire. One by one they passed over Quebec and moved off the coast. Their slow drift, coupled with the air plunging toward their cores, generated winds more long-lasting and powerful than any seen along the Maine coast for decades: southeasterlies of up to 70 miles an hour, with a few gusts to 90.

           The damage was among the worst ever suffered on the Maine coast. Immediately afterwards, some people swore they’d rebuild the wharves and docks and seafood packing houses they’d lost. But it’s becoming clear that this winter’s trio of tempests may have forever changed fishing communities here.

            When the first storm arrived on December 18th, Mainers everywhere felt its power. Ferocious winds left hundreds of thousands of households without electricity. Heavy rains pushed inland as far as Farmington (near Sugarloaf Mountain), where massive flooding shut down the entire city.

All that water swiftly ran for the sea. In the town of Hallowell, on the Kennebec River, waterfront businesses were left with two feet of tide in their basements. In downtown Brunswick, the Androscoggin River rose with such force that highway officials feared it would swamp the bridge crossing it. Flood water poured over the dam there and roiled its way downstream, roaring so loudly I could barely hear the words of a woman standing next to me. The dam stands about 18 feet. On that day, the overburdened river lapped nearly halfway up its height.

The second storm blew in three-and-a-half weeks later, its power centered over the coast. The third system followed three days later, in the same track. December 18th, January 10th, and January 13th:  “To get one of these storms would have been more than enough,” Maine state climatologist Sean Birkel said in an online presentation. Three in a row, in less than a month, was beyond belief. It didn’t help that the fiercest portion of the January 13th storm  arrived with an astronomically high tide—up to 14.7 feet, a state record.

            Every sea town or headland with any eastern exposure suffered significant damage. The beaches of Wells. The waterfronts in Portland. Harpswell, Phippsburg , Bristol, Port Clyde, Rockland, Rockport, Camden, Stonington, and on up the coast. Massive ocean waves even topped Pemaquid Point, with its famous lighthouse set high on a rocky point. The front wall of the brick building that holds the sea bell there was beaten to pieces by surf.

Maine’s fishing communities were home to countless docks and wharves that jutted into ocean coves, many with seafood packing houses atop them. Waves conjured by the two January storms damaged or destroyed many of them. The direction of the winds didn’t help. “Normally we have northeasters,” said Ben Martens, executive director of the nonprofit Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association. “We’ve built our infrastructure to handle northeasters, and we got waves coming from a direction that was completely unexpected. And then three days later, it happened again—but worse. Nobody was prepared for the scale of it.”

Lobster traps, neatly stacked on docks for the winter, were rolled and thrown by waves. Those that could be recovered were filled with leaves and seaweed. “The tides were two feet higher than the NOAA forecast,” Martens said. “In the middle of the (January 13th) storm, guys were wading through tide to unplug cords from electrical boxes that they had thought were okay”—high enough to be safe from flooding.

Estimates are that between 50 and 60 percent of the state’s working waterfronts were damaged or completely destroyed.

            From my years of living on Hurricane Alley on the North Carolina Outer Banks, I know what the residents of those battered communities must now face. Photographs and videos of flooding never completely capture the damage: the filth, the smell, the mold, the scale of the ruin.

How can these communities possibly recover from such a blow in the three short months before peak season begins?

When I asked Martens that question, he became somber.  “Honestly, we’re making it up as we go along,” he said. The state’s fishing fleet doesn’t have the knowledge or response team to swing right into rebuilding the damaged structures, in part because of the permits needed. “What’s legal? What’s not legal? What are the steps we need to go through?”

The question now, he said, is whether many of the wooden wharves and fish houses so iconic along the Maine coast will be built back at all.

  There are so many factors that comprise the landscapes we love. For me one of those is the mess of boats and docks along the coast, as well as the people who work the waters. Fishing towns have grit and vibrance; they’re a stellar example of communities that exist in spite of, not because of modern culture. They’re also among the places most threatened by climate change.

The islands of the North Carolina Outer Banks, my home for three decades, don’t have nearly Maine’s tidal amplitude: 8-plus feet on the coast near the New Hampshire state line, building to 18 feet at Eastport, near the Canadian border. The ocean rising and falling 18 feet, twice a day: It’s a sight to behold, and not easy to work around.

Nor do the fish packing houses in Wanchese and Avon and Hatteras Village have wharves that extend into open waters like they do in Maine. Unloading and packing seafood on the Outer Banks is done on the more sheltered coastal sounds. In the aftermath of tropical storms and damaging northeasters, there’s plenty of money lost and nasty mucking out to do. Comparatively speaking, though, the logistics of putting things back in order are much simpler.

            Wharves in Maine typically reach far out into ocean coves and are set high enough to be out of the reach of tides. On the dropping-and-swelling ocean here, it’s tricky to unload crates and boxes of lobsters and the bait fish menhaden (called pogies here). Mechanical lifts are often used to bring filled crates up to the level of wharves.

            Think about the difficulty and expense of replacing all that, especially in these times: A lobsterman I spoke with said that last summer, six months before the storms, a family member had made some inquiries about replacing a single, simple wharf. He was told that because of labor shortages, the marine construction company was taking orders three years out.

Working waterfronts in Maine were already under tremendous pressure because of gentrification. During the pandemic, sales of second homes in Maine skyrocketed. The Island Institute, the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, and other nonprofit groups are nervously tracking the disappearance of commercial mooring fields and landing sites.

As I read the accounts of damage and the struggles to work out how to get a few facilities operable for peak lobster season, I think about how much the lives of fishermen and women differ from mine. Fishing is an identity, not just a job. In an online video, a retired lobsterman from Camden describes how he considers the ocean to be the same as his home. “People don’t understand the connection to us of that flat, broad expanse of water. . . . To us it’s just like this town, where we have this street, and that house . . . It’s the extension of our lives. We have a vision and image and perception of all that’s going on underwater.”

Each time a boat goes out, there’s no guarantee it will return, though they almost always do. There’s generally no hourly wage, so earnings can fluctuate wildly. There’s only the community and the culture you belong to, and the joy of being on the water.

That culture includes the infrastructure that waits on shore. It’s been deeply upsetting to residents in these communities to lose wharves and packing houses with long family histories—many of them built by relatives and friends now gone.

  There’s talk of the state and federal governments providing financial assistance, though it’s not clear how much or when it might arrive. It’s difficult to imagine that it will be sufficient to rebuild all that was lost. For now, says Sam Belknap of the Island Institute, the affected families aren’t counting on financial help. They don’t have time. Their focus is on doing everything they can to get back on the water for the season. That includes repairing structures that received minor damage and working out arrangements to share space with those whose docks and wharves and packing houses were spared.

“Fishermen are fixers,” Martens said. “They move move move. I’m always awed by the resilience of these guys and their families and communities.” Even so, he acknowledged, everyone’s feeling pretty beat up. “I think we just experienced a watershed moment in Maine.”

The three storms made it clear, Belknap says, that “climate change isn’t a ‘then’ problem. It’s a ‘now’ problem.”

Whichever wharves and docks and fish houses are replaced, recommendations are that they be built back higher—two or even four feet higher—than the original structures. Raising them, of course, carries additional expense. And should they again be made of wood, or of aluminum—or steel?

Martens noted that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds can be made available to communities but not to individuals. So some towns may opt to build central docks and seafood packing facilities that can be shared. “I think it’s going to be a community by community decision,” he said.

Time will tell how many of the old iconic structures will be rebuilt. Suppose, Martens mused, you had a small dock behind your house where you could store some lobster traps and sometimes tie up your boat. It was old, maybe built by your grandfather. Those kinds of docks were everywhere. They were part of the coast’s well-worn but vibrant feel.

Many, if not most, are gone.

Silvering Light

We’re past the season of the lowering, as I’ve come to call it, when the sun sits slightly deeper with each passing day in Maine, even at noon. By mid-December, rather than arcing across the sky, it merely rolls around the edges, never climbing more than a fist’s width above the horizon. The trees cast thin, stretched-out shadows that stand out starkly when there’s a cover of snow. The sun rises about 7:00 and sets just after 4:00. I try to make as much of those nine hours as I can.   

In late 2018 during our first full winter in Maine, I dreaded the shortening of the days. Not quite a year had passed since we’d left the North Carolina Outer Banks as some of America’s earliest climate migrants. We’d pulled up stakes and launched ourselves into a new life up north, hoping we wouldn’t find the cold and the long winter nights oppressive. To my great surprise, the fading light made me feel settled in and safe. We’d managed to make a major life shift much sooner than we’d planned. The reverberations from that explosive act were still with me. Nothing seemed certain. But the winter dark somehow comforted me. (The appealing novelty of the long nights would wear off as the years rolled round—six of them now.)

That first full winter I was surprised to see the strange optical effect created by the lowering sun. In the weeks around the winter solstice, its light slants and flattens. In our fields, the browns and grays of milkweed and meadowsweet fade as their stems freeze and dry to rattles. Shadows deepen, even within the grooved bark of oaks and pines. Every line seems more well-defined, as if my vision has suddenly grown sharper.

When I first noticed this, out walking one day, I thought something had gone slightly screwy with my eyes. I crossed the fields and hills near our house with a slightly off-kilter feel. Back inside, I searched the cabinets and closets for colorful fabrics to make sure my vision was still working. (It was.) The sideways sliding sun was simply casting a different light. It was more stark. With a covering of snow, the bleaching of the landscape became even more severe. The flattened, silvery tones bathed the land only from mid-December until sometime in early January, when one day I noticed the brightened browns and pale yellows of timothy grass again washing the fields.

It’s been that way each year since—until now.

Early this past summer it began to rain, and rain. At first this was most welcome. Maine had been in a serious drought for three years. There was talk that the dryer weather was a product of climate change and might be permanent. Area farmers began to wonder if they would be able to adjust to a warmer, drought-plagued New England.

Every few days it rained, all summer long—often five days out of seven. Rivers rose. Campgrounds in the north woods closed because of the high water. Black flies swarmed later and more ferociously than usual. Float trips were cancelled, the beach season mostly ruined. Lawns grew with astounding speed but couldn’t often be cut; conditions were too wet. The rains continued into autumn, which was much warmer than normal. A single inch-and-a-half of snow fell in early December, hung on the trees for a few days, received a mild freshening of new snow—and then washed away in rain. And the showers that came were much heavier than normal, with storms often dumping an inch or two of moisture.

In mid-December a major storm swirled up the East Coast, dropping up to six inches of rain here. Its winds howled and ebbed, howled and ebbed, very much like those in a hurricane. I knew the feel of that weather. Where was I living? In Maine, or still on the Outer Banks?

Christmastime arrived, and with it the lowering of light. But this year the silvering rays fell not on freeze-desiccated stems and stubble, but on green grass. On a Maine landscape that had yet to experience a solid cold snap. (I thought back to our first autumn here, when a neighbor warned me that it wouldn’t be unusual to have our first frost when green leaves still clung to trees.) Mosses grew lushly on the north sides of trees and on the rocks lining streams. And so I walked through the Christmas holidays and into the New Year not through a landscape of silver and platinum, but in one that even as a newcomer I found shockingly unfamiliar.

Shortly before Christmas, my mother’s best friend called from Pennsylvania. As we chatted, she exclaimed, “The grass is still green here! I can’t believe it.” As with our grass, hers did not grow. But neither did it die.

In ways small and large, climate change makes itself known.

            The deepest nights of the year have gone, and our part of the world arcs toward spring. It will still be a long journey for us—through what many of us hope will be (but fear will not be) the snowy months. If the cold never comes, I worry that we will have continuous weeks of mud season, when Maine is at its absolute worst. At last we’ll reach mid-May and the yearly greening. With each revolution around the sun, this Earth moves further into a new era. I do not know what to expect of it. No one really does.

            Do you have a particular spot in the natural world that’s dear to you, and that you fear will be radically altered, perhaps even destroyed, by a warming climate? If so, please get in touch. I would like to compile an atlas of natural places that are deeply important to us and that are under serious threat because of climate. This should be a specific site, one that speaks to you personally. My hope is to make this a widely collaborative project.

            I envision this as a way to honor the special places that may soon become unrecognizable to us (or that we’ve already lost). My hope is to collect these stories and post them online. Please send me a brief (less than 500 or so words) description of your beloved place and a photo if at all possible. You can find me at jdeblieu@gmail.com. Many thanks, Jan

A Climate Migrant's New Life

            Early one clear autumn morning I go down to a dock just off a narrow river on the mid-coast of Maine. Two slim wooden boats are tied here—rowing dories shaped like slips of moon, each awaiting a handful of rowers and a coxswain. There’s a thick cover of dew. It’s cool enough for sweatshirts but not too cold to row. The rowers chat as we take our positions, but this is not a social hour. We ready our twelve-foot oars and await the coxswain’s orders, eager to slide onto the calm, winding river.

            I’m new to this rowing group, and somewhat new to this village. Before this year I’d never really rowed. The waters of my former long-time home, the gale-plagued North Carolina Outer Banks, would have been too choppy and dangerous for such narrow, tipsy crafts.

            I am a climate migrant, among the first in the U.S. Jeff and I left the Outer Banks in 2018 after three decades of watching sea level rise and tropical storms turn the thin, once-scantly settled barrier islands into a heavy-equipment operators’ playground. It’s hard enough to hold a sandy reef together in normal times, given that the ocean constantly pushes it west. Now sand-scrapers and backhoes often work around the clock to try to block the ocean’s advance—and to save the lavish houses that line the once-open shores.

            It’s all futile, of course, and what’s coming is going to make it even more so. Things are getting worse by the year on the world’s sea coasts. In 2016, when the outermost edge of Hurricane Matthew knocked down hundreds of trees on Roanoke Island, our home, we began looking seriously for a safer place to live. The center of that storm, and the most powerful winds, had stayed 100 miles to the south of us.

            Many people will face a similarly wrenching decision as climate change continues to take hold. Wildfires, droughts, astounding heat waves, strengthened tornados and hurricanes: There are plenty of reasons to consider leaving the most severely affected regions. Nor are the parts of the country considered “safe” without their own climate problems, including here. The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest warming water bodies in the world. Invasive, north-moving insects like the hemlock wooly adelgid and the emerald ash borer threaten entire forests.

            Americans are a famously unsettled people. We pushed relentlessly across a continent and even now move long distances for jobs, for family, for sunnier climes. But there is a qualitative difference between electing to try life in a different locale and abandoning your beloved home to find one in a safer place. A climate move can upend perfectly comfortable lives—and it implies that there is no going back.

            For me our move from the Outer Banks carried the heartbreak of leaving a landscape I deeply loved. Waking each morning there, listening to the salty breezes sing through the tops of the loblolly pines in our yard, I felt more complete than I had anywhere on Earth. Walking the miles-long beaches opened me and renewed me. I didn’t think anything would ever drive me away.

            The chore of emptying our Outer Banks home of three decades, where we had assumed we’d grow old—where we had become the people we are—was painful beyond words. We walked away from the friends who knew us best, aware that our easy, day-to-day relationships would never be the same. Once north we faced the task of learning a different regional culture. On meeting you Southerners will ask all manner of questions about your life. New Englanders are kind but more quiet and cautious. Establishing friendships here takes longer. In our case the process was made even more difficult by the pandemic. Still, we were exceedingly lucky. We landed in a place that suits us well.

            That’s not to say our lives are the same. Even after nearly six years I still don’t have the easy I-belong-here confidence that I enjoyed on the Outer Banks. There I knew what each wind shift meant, how it would shape the ocean waves and the very feel of the day. I knew when to step in to help a friend with an ailing relative and when such an offer would seem intrusive. That kind of deep local knowledge isn’t something I can quickly rebuild.

            The crescendo of our move was followed not by climate bedlam on the Outer Banks, but by a continuation of normal life. Although a major hurricane swept over Ocracoke Island in 2019, although erosion and sunny day flooding frequently cause problems now, nothing much else has changed. A part of my heart catches when I think of the years I could have enjoyed there. Even so, I wouldn’t change our decision to come north.

            How soon should people in danger zones leave, if they choose to? At some point the scales will tip, and there will be clear winners and losers in the relocation lottery. Housing prices will plummet or soar; storms or fires or floods will destroy communities. While I feel safer in Maine, this world is not particularly safe, anywhere. Yet I feel a peace and sense of solidness here that wasn’t possible anymore on the Outer Banks. During hurricane season I keep loose track of the storms that are spinning along the Atlantic seaboard. But instead of a rising pulse, I feel only a deep sadness when one threatens the islands I still love.

            My new home isn’t a climate paradise. Not at all. At times the weather here resembles an ill-tempered, dangerous animal. Last year a microburst tossed the roof from a neighbor’s barn into our field. Winters are growing increasingly wretched as the reliable New England cold gives way to cycles of intense freezing, followed by immediate thaws. Mud season in spring is interminably bleak.

            But for now, as autumn slides toward winter, all is well. And so I row, reveling in the clear, slanted light and the moist coolness. The smooth rhythm of the oars is like the graceful passing of days when I no longer worry about which tropical storm will next put our home in its sights. We row, passing shadowy hemlocks that dip their branches toward the water and marshes filled with wild rice—a vibrant green last month but now brown and limp. We pull back in unison and release our oars with a single sharp click. Rounding a curve, we gasp as a sturgeon leaps from the water, flexing its sleek, silvery body (while we still manage to keep stroke). As we pull and push and glide, I celebrate my new home on high, rocky ground, that—however changed by climate—will still be intact a century hence.

Prisoner at Home

Late one winter afternoon, I walk crunchily down a road on a forested point of land that thrusts into Merrymeeting Bay. My snowshoes make more noise than I’d like; I certainly won’t be sneaking up on wildlife today. On either side of me is water, glimmering through the trees. Tides and currents have broken the ice that covers the bay into jagged bits. These catch light from the lowering sun, throwing up rays of rose and purple on one side of the point, yellow and gold on the other. I stand and watch the shimmering colors for as long as I dare. The Northern Lights, I think, the terrestrial version. The sky deepens to purple and I hurry on, ahead of the looming dark. Cool air sings through my lungs, fresh and sweet.

During any other winter I might have missed this show, tethered to my desk as I finished the day’s last tasks. But I can dispense with all those later this evening—may as well, in fact. There’s not much else to do.

I’m a fairly frequent traveler and normally might not be at home for more than a couple of months in a row. Of everything that’s changed for me during the pandemic, this is one of the most profound: my presence here, here, rather than, say, visiting beloved family or returning for a spell to my former home on the North Carolina Outer Banks. Jetting off to France to continue my exploration of the village from which my family takes its name. We live in Maine now, in the fullest sense of that word. There is no escaping to somewhere else. How long until it’s again safe to travel? Are we really only halfway through the pandemic?

I try not to dwell on all I’m missing out in the world, though sometimes a restlessness rises in me like a trapped bird. It’s the height of spoiled indulgence to be distressed by having to stay home when so many people are suffering such hardship, I know. So I tamp down my wanderlust and reach out again to those I miss, hoping I’m not bothering them, rationing my phone calls and Zoom sessions like a medicine that’s in short supply.

And I walk, forcing myself outside, trying to exercise my way out of emptiness and frustration. I live in one of the most comfortable possible places to spend a pandemic: lots of countryside to hike; fresh food available from neighboring farms; and, thankfully, a mild winter making it possible to walk or ski with friends. To sit around outdoor fires, staying carefully on the other side of the flames from our companions.

With no road trips, no new scenery to take in, I try to watch closely all that goes on around me. I can manage this most days for approximately fifteen seconds. With fewer distractions and errands pressing in on me each day, I should be able to focus my mind more keenly—right? Probably not, it turns out, and possibly the opposite. The constancy of days at home seems to be immersing me in a mental fog. I keep reminding myself that I’m also unhappy when commitments take me away from home for longer than I’d like. 

I try to take note of all there is to see here: the lengthening daylight (coming more quickly now), the snow buntings and other birds I’d be unlikely to spot down South, the trees and shrubs I only glanced at, back when they had leaves and would have been easier to identify. I walk more, which occasionally yields sights like the ice-bound Northern Lights. On days I’m especially antsy, I venture outside to chop away Japanese honeysuckle, a pretty but predatory shrub that, if allowed, will take over every inch of of our land. 

Still it’s not enough.

There have been times in my life when, after reading about people being held prisoner for long periods (Nelson Mandela comes to mind), I’ve wondered if I could stay sane under such conditions. I like to think I’d be mentally strong enough to invent strategies to hold on: constant meditation, say, or devising a clever code to communicate with other prisoners. They couldn’t keep me in chains, not my truest self! Yet here I am, in the most watered-down version of imprisonment imaginable, and I can’t even muster the energy to straighten up my desk. All I want is to be is somewhere besides home.

In the introduction to his book Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World, Scott Russell Sanders writes, “My nation’s history does not encourage me, or anyone, to belong somewhere with a full heart.” When I first read those words, my heart fully belonged to the Outer Banks, and might still if those thin strands weren’t being drowned by rising waters and unbridled development. I tell myself that I’ve dedicated myself entirely to this new home. But is that true? If so, what can I see in it—what can I absorb—that would be difficult for me to notice in normal times? 

Like it or not, this pandemic is another opportunity for each of us to move more mindfully through the world. Why not treat it as that, since we’re going to have to get through it one way or another? What can I learn in the process? There are more lessons than I could ever list (including this one: The very idea that I might gain insight from all this irritates the heck out of me, Why might that be?).

I’ve come to allow myself an occasional pandemic melt down, and why not? At such moments I go off by myself to silently scream and flail my arms. I’ve done a version of this for years, actually. It’s quite therapeutic, a part of my spiritual practice that quickly restores my equilibrium. And I can rest easy knowing that, unlike normal times, should anyone catch me in one of my raging sessions now, the person would likely give a sympathetic nod.

The days pass. Light is slowly returning. I hold on to that with all my strength. God knows, we pray it’s a light that comes from more than the season-rounding slant of the sun.