What's available to me now?
Hello from the couch!
January 12, 2024, 18:53, flood tide, waxing gibbous, Early Winter
High 42ºF/ Low 21ºF, clear, pressure 1014 mb, 4.90 feet
My city has had two snowstorms since I chimed in about how to make sauerkraut.
The first snow came in on Sunday night, bringing snow days, closures, and power outages. An issue with a water pump cascaded into a six-day boil water notice for the city and some surrounding counties. The news broke to us through group texts. We filled containers with water, took quick showers, and filled the tub. Scott shoveled snow into the big green cooler and I cooked some raw ingredients on the electric stove, just in case we lost power.
We had water pressure the entire week and could flush toilets, but other areas lost it. We followed the news in a way that reminded us of early COVID.
We went to Scott’s folks in the county for dinner, water refill, and showers.
The snow and its cascading constraints made for more of a homebound week. Scott took my diploma out of the box for the first time since I graduated and hung it by my desk. I reimagined an old quilt project into a small one for Cypress. We moved the stereo to a different room and organized that one closet.
On Friday night, the water main in our neighborhood broke, and a crew with a bulldozer tore up the sidewalk and repaired it within a few hours. I was awake late Friday when our water returned with a loud gurgling in the water heater. On Saturday, my sister and I had a delightful mix of errands and fun with the city back up and running. Now the weekend is ending with the last game of the Packers season, and our house is in its best shape with us as occupants. I have been shifting my attention between writing and watching football, and it reminds me of game days mingling with homework when I was a kid.
We ran out of water once on our sail from San Francisco to the Chesapeake Bay.
We were anchored in Portobello, Panama, a now sleepy port town where 60% of the South American silver exports left for Spain during the colonial period. The shape of the land makes it a particularly rainy place and sailors often sail there precisely to capture rainwater. Our tanks were running low, and the rain wasn’t coming in, so I paddleboarded to shore with a backpack and bought as many liter water bottles as I could carry. We were conserving our diesel and didn’t want to run the desalinator. There wasn’t much else on the agenda for the day, and the shoreside excursion was enough to get us through to the next rain.
We relied on rainwater primarily for about nine months of the trip.
Sailing 10,000 miles with only the safety net we wove along the way taught us about resilience, imperfection, and our relationship to the earth. As we move forward in an increasingly unstable climate, I’m thinking about what I have to offer and how to keep writing. For now, let’s get back to the basics.
The number one thing that helped me face long night watches with the void of the ocean and uncertain timelines in hot, sticky port towns was asking myself this:
What’s available to me now?
I start by thinking of the weather, the time of day, the phase of various cycles, the abundance of resources, who else is around, etc.
Considering my conditions grounds me in the moment and highlights what I can do rather than what I can’t.
What’s available to you now?
Scott took a photo walk in the snow last week.
With feet planted, he turned left for the cardinal and right for the cemetery.
Last spring, I went through raft guide training with RVA Paddlesports. The Headwaters Down guys made a film about our training class, which airs on Saturday night at Bingo Beer Company in Richmond, VA. Click the post below for more details:
Spring training runs on weekends, March 9-28. I can’t recommend it enough!