A Matter of Degree

When our most recent Nor’easter, “Athena” arrived last week (Who knew “winter” storms get labeled now, too?), I choked when I heard her name.  Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and “Just” Wars, pounded our coast eight days after Sandy. For a while Wednesday and Thursday, I wondered what wisdom irate Mother Nature sought to impart as she launched her second offensive in less than two weeks. Patience, perhaps? Maybe fortitude?  Or perhaps, it was something else. 

 

We get these Nor’easters, and we get through them, but during Athena, following so closely on the heels of Sandy’s devastation, something occurred that brought to mind how fate factors into our lives.

   

The coast south of Boston is littered with sharp rocks.  The area’s past is colored with tragic shipwrecks—including a horrible story of Irish of immigrants who died within sight of our unforgiving shores.  Only a fool pilots the waters anywhere near us without up-to-date navigational charts.  Once, my husband watched a man throttle his powerboat outside a marked channel at the mouth of our harbor.  Before he could finish saying, “That guy is nuts” that “guy” hit ledge and began to sink. 

Keeping that in mind, tell me how this happens? With the wind blasting and massive swells pounding on shore and off shore ledges this week, an empty fishing boat from Gloucester, a city north of Boston, (13.5 nautical miles away, or about 60 miles by car— an interminable time through traffic should you choose to drive), pulls its mooring and travels across Massachusetts Bay to the South Shore.  It makes it from one coast to another, without capsizing and without hitting rock.  It rides Athena’s mountainous waves and washes up, relatively unscathed in front of a house, which happens to sit on the brink of one of the few small stretches of ledge-free coast in our town. 

I’m sure the owner of that boat is cursing the mooring that didn’t hold, but I hope, also, he is counting his blessings.  I think of folks in New York and New Jersey, who’ve lost everything—scrabbling for scraps of their lives—chasing family photos as they blow across debris littered lots.  Then I imagine that fishing boat, twirling and spinning across miles of dangerous water, missing the Grampus Ledges, the Black Rocks, Minot’s Ledge, Harding Ledge, Thieves Ledge, and so many other obstacles, to land, battered but whole, on the other side of Massachusetts Bay. 

I caught a photo of the boat during the height of the storm.  The next day, the sky was scrubbed clean and blue.  I stepped out with the camera, chasing a picture of the still ferocious sea crashing over our lighthouse, and as I made my way down the coast, I passed the stranded boat again.  Seeing it there, safe and whole, I understood Athena's lesson. 

There’s a mighty fine line between awesome and awful.

IWSG: A Resource for You

This is my post for November’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  To read other contributors click here.

In 2011, I participated in a Grubb Street fiction workshop taught by author Lynne Griffin via a grant through our local library.  At the time, I’d written a first attempt at a novel, a mess I’d consigned to a folder on my flash drive.  During the six week workshop, I learned much about POV, voice, and setting, but the lesson that resonated for me focused on conflict.  Through Lynne's classes, I realized my first novel was a disaster because I had been afraid to raise the stakes.  A confessed coward, I refrained from forcing hardship on the characters I created, and whom I’d come to love.  As a result?  Ho hum...

During the spring before the class, I’d started a second novel, and though I had to take several breaks at critical junctures before I could bear to force my protagonists into overwhelming and sometimes tragic circumstances, the lessons I absorbed from Lynne allowed me to do so.  Now, on my tenth revision, I still have a long way to go, but when I think about the impact that class had on me, I know I’d never have my second, improved story without it. 

Aside from the bla, bla, bla backstory above, I gained one more thing from Lynne’s class. From 2006-2009, she and three of her partners took turns writing for their blog, called  the Writer’s Group.  There, they shared experiences in regard to all things writing, and though they no longer contribute to it, the blog remains public.  Their engaging essays impart truths and reassurances related to the technical and emotional considerations associated with writing and publishing.  When I need practical help or feel most insecure about my journey, I peruse the subjects they covered back then and it always helps to keep me going. 

Check out the Writer’s Group.   Maybe it will help you too.

What resources do you turn to when the writing journey overwhelms you?

...and After

A place of normal one-foot waves, seaweed fifty yards across the street.

 

Tree roots taller than the scholar.  The boat is shrouded in green.          

We are blessed.   

Sandy bestowed nothing on us other than a light headache.  Power came back after 23 hours.  Our daughter’s campus closed for Monday and Tuesday so we had an unexpected and delightful long weekend with her. Amtrak emailed her at 2:30 this morning to let her know her 9:00 train back would not be running, precipitating a quick pre-dawn trip up north by my husband to get her back in time for classes.  That was an inconvenience sure, but in no way surmountable. The yard we spend all day Saturday and Sunday raking looks like we never touched it.  Why do we rake before a storm, you ask?  Sheer volume makes it a requirement! The pine tree uprooted in my in-laws yard did not hit my husband’s sailboat, stored less than five feet away.

I think of the folks in NY and NJ and other hard hit areas, and I say a prayer.  

  

The Calm

Something ugly is coming our way.

Current updates say Sandy will be a tropical storm by the time she reaches us.  She's so big though, they warn us not to take her lightly.  Former Girl Scout that I am, I got up Saturday morning to buy my batteries, extra water, canned foods and gas for my car.

But before I did all that, it seemed important to take pictures of this.

Long Weekend

I cannot tell a lie.  It’s a lot easier to get up for the sunrise when it occurs at 7:06 a.m., than when light breaks at 4:30, like it does in the summer.  During a family trip to western Maine this past weekend, once my daughter informed me the sun wouldn’t make its appearance until after my usual get up time, I decided to give dawn a try.

At 6:50 Sunday morning, I threw my coat on, stepped out to 37-degree temps and tramped to the lake edge. We were up there; about 20 miles from the Canadian border and most of the birds have departed for warmer territories. No one around was awake except me.  

 I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced such quiet.