Like many of you, I watched the solar eclipse Monday afternoon. And, like many of you, I got on the road immediately after it peaked. No, I wasn’t driving home from the totality in Indiana or Ohio. I was already home, having decided that I didn’t want to add 5+ hours to a trip that was already nearly two and a half.
You see, I was heading Up North to Hart, Michigan, for an author talk about my Michigan Notable Book winner, Everything Is Just Beginning. The next morning I was going to be speaking there, and the library was putting me up in a hotel the night before so I didn’t have to do all my driving in one day.
So on the evening of the eclipse, I found myself just fifteen minutes from the Lake Michigan shore. What does one do in such situations? Why, you get yourself to the beach! Not for swimming (it’s April, people—let’s not be insane) but for sunset.
There’s truly no better place to watch a sunrise or sunset than over a sizeable body of water, and we have our pick of places here in Michigan (our state’s official territory is 40% water, after all). So I went to the sleepy off-season tourist town of Silver Lake, where there are great big sand dunes and a lovely red brick lighthouse called, charmingly, Little Sable Point.
When I arrived in the parking lot, I was the only one there. I sloughed through the sandy trail and struggled up the side of dune. Cresting the top, I was met by roaring Lake Michigan waves, whipping wind, and a gorgeous, empty, pristine beach. It was exactly where I wanted to be.
After exploring the shoreline, examining the interesting features created by the wind in the sand, and taking lots of photos, I went back to my car to get a blanket. My arms were already cold and the sun was getting closer to setting. I have four blankets in my trunk. I chose a brown plaid wool blanket that used to be my dad’s but somehow became mine many years ago (I may have just taken it from my parents’ house at some point). It was lighter and smaller than the queen size quilt I had, bigger and warmer than the two fleece blankets I also had. (Why do I have so many blankets in my trunk at all times? Who can say? But I am always ready to move furniture and plants or take a nap on a grassy lot.)
I sat down on the dunes, in this beautiful place at beautiful time of day, and waited for sunset. On any other day I would have been supremely content. I love wild places. I love quiet time alone in nature. I love knowing that I am taking the time to notice something that others are missing. I should have been happy. And I was…
But I wasn’t, really.
Because I wasn’t distracted.
And I have been so busy with work, author events, garden projects, and even just watching shows (we recently finished Fargo and started Loudermilk) that for the past two weeks, I have managed to, most of the time, not think about…
I can’t even type it.
But being completely undistracted—there’s no wifi or data signal out there—I had nothing else to think about. In one of my favorite environments, in one of my favorite states of being, I felt sad and hopeless in the face of a loved one’s diagnosis.
Sometimes a story’s environment—the settings, the weather, the soundtrack—match the story’s mood. And sometimes it doesn’t. And in those incongruities where things don’t match up, we can find potential.
Let’s see what I mean…
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