Currently

It is wildfire season. Our view of distant glaciers is thin, gauzy. I’ve grown to rely on the strength of our landscape, these towering mountains keeping watch, standing still, a merciful comfort when things feel hard. But today, they are silent. The kids and I take turns grasping at the right words for the precise color of this nicotine sky. Dishwater? Sour milk?

Like the end of a bruise, we all agree.

At night, we sleep with the windows shut tight, beads of sweat behind our knees. We wake up wild-eyed with restlessness to find ash on our cereal bowls. We eat inside on the floor, play a round of Old Maid, take turns cooling our necks in front of the box fan, watch the sky.

I call a friend and she listens to my account of the choreographed trapeze act required to get a meal on the table. I catch myself referencing our outdoor kitchen and stop short, realizing she’s picturing a happy little brick pizza oven, jute rug, maybe string lights? I attempt an explanation:

We have a grill, yes, yes, it’s back-heavy, the eggs spill northwest and I have to chase them back to center before they run off the side and onto the deck. Yes! A deck! The one we built last summer? No, no stairs off that one side yet, so we have a weird little plank we screwed down for the slope – not quite stable, no – so I walk that a few times to get my ingredients from the shipping container – oh gosh, like a soccer field away? – yep, well, that’s where the fridge is because there’s power over there… keep a few dry ingredients in the cabin, but you know, mice, and I have a little prep station for chopping – just a folding card table with the cheeriest little tablecloth that, well, every now and then, it catches the wind and sails straight off into the trees – yeah, the table, too!… the kids chase ’em down like little houseware shepherds.

(You know you could just ditch the idea of a tablecloth, my husband said to me last week, as if I am a stranger to him, as if moving a few states away might mean I’ll finally choose function over form, as if I have not spent the past twenty-five years by his side fluffing pillows and rearranging flatware in times of great duress. )

I tell her of the sink we rescued from a friend’s yard en route to the dump, for which we attached a garden hose in lieu of a faucet. I describe the dish rack that brings me great joy, the ScrubDaddy that is for sure leaching microplastics but is the best thing I’ve found yet for caked-on granola in the absence of hot water. The electric skillet with the broken handle, the single wooden spoon, the knives in need of sharpening – where did we pack the honing steel? – the borrowed garage shelving to hold it all.

She laughs and laughs, says she can picture it all. She promises to remind me – someday, when I’m sitting on a comfy armchair in a warm home with running water and real floors and finished drywall and – gasp! – window treatments – that it was hard but it was good, and that we laughed when it mattered.

We fish out the soccer net from storage, let our son conquer us all. My daughter dries mullein flowers. For our breathing, she says.

The children battle thistles. I split logs and we all stack cords. Even the youngest finds splinters in her laundered socks. I make blackberry and feta pizza, a pile of leftover rosemary potatoes on top. It’s what we had in the fridge, I hedge. But it’s delicious.

On trips into town, we visit our common haunts: the skate park, church, impromptu visits to friends. At the library, my 5-year-old and I squat over a light table with polished stones and miniature pond figurines atop, a tiny glass habitat scattered along the surface. We’ll line the birds up, one by one, make a little gemstone parade and I’ll think, Look at us, getting our ducks in a row.

Before the fires rage, before the air quality prevents it, we meet friends at the lake on a hot afternoon. We’ll be there between 1 and 3, they say, and I smile at the laissez faire time frame. They arrive after 2, and I’m grateful I brought a book.

Later, I reference this in an interview with a Harvard student working on her debut book about tech and Gen Z. Believe it or not, I say, there are areas in the world – even right here in America! – where cell service is unavailable. Around here, smartphones regularly display an SOS warning where 5G used to be. The result is an existence that is at first maddening, then refreshing. Technology becomes right-sized. You use it when you have it, don’t when you don’t. The world feels proportionate again, as if the axis is no longer tilting toward omniscience. We all get to be a little inefficient with our days, get to be late, get to be wrong, get to be quiet.

Sounds kind of wild, she says.

At night, my youngest and I read Betsy-Tacy, and soon, Tib. She asks which is the one with the braids again, which is the one with the curls, and she needs to know it’s the same each time. Still with the curls? she’ll say. Still with the curls, I’ll assure her. You’re sure? I’m sure.

One night, I hear her humming God Only Knows as she falls asleep. When she’s awake, she mixes up the lyrics. If you should ever need me / Well darling, I’ll go out, believe me / You never need to route it / I’ll make you so sure about it.

Later she’ll play dress-up in my clothes, hems dragging down dusty trails, still seeking small certainties. I’m Tacy, she’ll say. No curls, right?

The Monday before Ken’s birthday, I greet him with the mug that says Waterton Park, a gift from friends, a place we’ve never been. Every morning this week, I proudly declare, you’ll have a lukewarm dirty chai awaiting you before your feet have hit the floor. I push two cardboard boxes containing bamboo toilet paper to the side of his bed. And a nightstand to put it on!

He laughs; we both do. The day before, we’d toured a new-build nearby, a luxury log cabin with no expense spared, the vacation home of soon-to-be neighbors who plan to retire on our side of the mountain. A dog-washing station! we admire. A whole room for cold storage! Two walk-out decks and a walk-in coffee bar! We applaud the couple on their ability to cross the finish line from many states away, on the long list of details to sort out, decisions to make, crews to manage.

It’ll be worth it, they tell us, and we nod knowingly, recognizing we’ve been saying the same for four summers, that we’ll have another few to go before our own hard work comes to fruition.

But today, the week of my husband’s birthday, I tell him I’d rather live in these old leaky cabins for the next 45 years if it means doing it slowly, together, as a family.

He smiles, eyes wet. But did you see the cold storage room?

What I’m learning is this: It’s difficult to terraform raw land, to renovate a life that you dearly loved. Why change what was working just fine? Why risk the safe assurance you once held to in search for something that might fall short? God only knows, why reroute it?

It feels a little like taking the long way home, I imagine. You could get turned around, sure. Lose your way, waste time.

Or, you could find yourself on a road you’d not yet dreamed of, one with a majestic view only Bierstadt had shown you, lined with mullein the whole way through.

For breathing, your daughter might say.