Saturday was my birthday! I was lucky to spend the weekend with a dear friend who lives in Chapel Hill. I spent three days hiking in the woods, trying to take in new-to-me birdcalls (hello ovenbird! hello vireo!), blobbing on the couch, and just spending time with someone I can now say I’ve known for half my life! What a gift.
When I got to North Carolina on Thursday it was unseasonably warm. We hiked through the too-humid afternoon to the top of a hill and looked out at the lush green before us. On the way up we could see where the preserve had been closed just days before for a controlled/prescribed burn.
Longleaf pine is a big deal in North Carolina’s ecosystem, and contributes to NC having an incredibly high level of biodiversity. The tree is also naturally fire resistant, and its lifecycle relies on low-intensity but frequent fires1. The prescribed burns have a number of benefits, from opening up the canopy to reducing tick populations. Even though it had been a few days since the burn, we could still smell the ash and wisps of smoke curled out of cinders here and there.2
The North Carolina Fire Service has tons of messaging about how they go about the burns. My favorite so far is this pamphlet with the unambiguous title: Support Good Fires and Prevent Bad Ones. Yes! It should be so simple! Support the good [insert whatever you like here] and prevent the bad kind.
At first it makes me think about stress, the so-called good stress, the kind that makes my thoughts clear and efficient, that feels like I’ve had the world’s strongest coffee and I can just go, go, go. And then the bad stress, the kind that I carry in my body, that feels more and more difficult to shake off at the end of a week of my computer job.3
But then — of course! — it makes me think about aging and the choices you make. The way you need to cull and set parts of yourself on fire in order to clear the way for what comes next and the parts of yourself you haven’t met yet. How many versions of myself will I know in my life? Sometimes it feels like you are a forest and you are constantly being reborn from the undergrowth, new gracious tender leaves unfurling and showing themselves.
Birthdays are weird.4 I feel the same as always, but not. In some ways I am more fearful now, because I know what to be afraid of, because I am so lucky, because I know the stakes. But I am also clearer on what I want and what I don’t want, lessons that are hard-earned. What good fires will I set this year? What bad fires can I prevent?
The Sew Zone
Finished this Felix Top from Spaghetti Western Sewing the night before I left for NC and I’m in love! I used a nice cotton batiste block print from Blackbird Fabrics for the body and a thrifted cotton button up for the collar and placket.
Consuming
Reading
a bunch of things since I last wrote to you!
The Wager by David Grann — non fiction about a mutiny in 1741! Next Scorsese project, allegedly
The End of Drum Time by Hanna Pylväinen — historical novel about Sami in northern Scandinavia in the mid 1800s, I loved it in ways I did not expect
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken — incredible memoir about a pregnancy loss. This line made me sit up straight: “Once you’ve been on the losing side of great odds, you never find statistics comforting again.” Yes.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray — I started this on Thursday evening and couldn’t put it down until I finished on Sunday. A portrait of a family in Ireland during the Great Recession, but also stunning in terms of structural choices.
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling — it was alright.
This piece by Joshua Hill on the ongoing campus protests
Listening
The 13th Step out of NHPR — a multi part series on abuse that was going / is going on at addiction treatment centers in the Northeast
…to the birds singing their spring songs
Eating
I ate so many tasty things in North Carolina but have to shoutout the biscuit sandwiches at Neal’s in Carrboro! Also making my way through a pie from Petsi Pies that Tim got me for my birthday.
Watching
Honestly have been on a roll
Challengers!! So so good.
The Fall Guy. Fun!
The Sting. A classic.
Civil War. A look at where things are headed good but none of his work will ever compare to Annihilation
Perfect Days. Wim, I love you.
xoxo
mvp
We also saw tons of cicadas, as the guys from the Great Southern Brood are now emerging in the South. There’s some sort of other metaphor there, lol.
After three days of walking through the woods and not being on screens, I don’t know that there is any good stress associated with a desk job. It’s not how we’re meant to live.
On Friday we watched the new Anne Hathaway romcom and a character at the beginning says: Your 20s are about figuring out how to be a person, and your 30s are about figuring out what kind of person you want to be. Uhh pretty much right on I think!! What are 40s about?! Is everything about something?