Little Compton

This is where my heart lives, I’ve always said, though the logical part of me knows it’s not a sensical thing to believe. My heart is just an organ; just a mass of flesh inside my rib cage. Yet whatever it is that we refer to as the heart – the spirit, the essence of my being, the part of the sentient me that throbs with life – that part was born right here, in this place, I tend to think, and not too long after my physical birth took place.

When I first came here I was just a few months old. My mother had swum in this ocean for 30 years at that point, and she took me right in, introducing me immediately to the feel of the salt water, the buoyancy of my body amidst the waves. A year or two later, she taught me how to submerge myself below a crashing wave—how to protect myself from its strength by sitting fully under it, to overcome it from below. I must’ve been very small then, because the waves here are not too tall but in my memory, as I watch my crouching-down self, my eyes-squeezing-shut self, the wave towers above me, as though it were solitary and 15 feet tall. I have never forgotten the first time I did that; my mother must’ve been nearby, perhaps beside me, but in my memory of it, I am alone; I am seated serenely on the sea floor as the water barrels over top of me.

In my first many summers here, she always referred to me as her water baby, her little fish who would not come out of the ocean for much of anything before dinnertime. When I did retreat from the waves, it was usually at full sprint, aiming toward one thing and one thing only—the towel she had waiting for me, spread wide along her arm span, shaken free of sand, dry, warm, and engrossing. As soon as I bolted into it she had it around me, she was rubbing my arms through it to warm them up, kissing my wet forehead, rocking my drying body in her lap, enveloping me in a snuggle. For this I was delighted to leave the ocean; for only this.

Evenings here were always simple. Before dinner, there might be a walk down to the cove, some prowling for mussels or blue crabs, a game of croquet. At 7 p.m., the opening jingle of NBC Nightly News would lure us into the house, which we’d shunned since morning, which we aimed not to enter as long as the sun still shone. Grandma and Grandpa would already be seated, bourbon and gin glasses in their respective hands. They tuned out the shuffling of cards as we slid our tan bodies onto the soft carpet, belly-down, and began to play. They listened to the news, often interrupting it to state their commentary; I listened mostly to the pleasing garble of Tom Brokaw’s speech, the gentle timbre of his voice. I loved him; I loved these summer evenings with the whole family; I loved their reliability—recurring identically day after day and year after year so that I sometimes forgot which visit I was enjoying, which age I had become in the intervening year, which life story had unfolded in between my timeless summer vacations.

I’ve come to Little Compton all 32 summers of my life. In the ten years I lived in Boston, I also came here weekly in good weather and monthly, often, in the off-season. The landscape, over time, has changed a little—the cliff I like to stand on at the end of the lane is slowly crumbling, sitting further back from the sea; the cabanas that once stood just behind the beach have been swept away by storms, the paths around them grown to mere hints of walkways under the dominating sprawl of rose hips and poison ivy; the gardens I like to wander in have expanded throughout our yard, no longer limited to the areas just around the house. Some years we have berries growing; some years Grandpa has killed them off. Some years trees lose branches, hurricanes and snowstorms ripping all but their boughs away, leaving bare spots and scraggly tops. Soon, I know, a more important feature of this place’s geography will change on me, and it will be the only one with which I cannot cope—soon, I know, my grandparents will no longer live here. In the meantime, as I return to this place that they’ve welcomed us into since I was born—since my mother was born too—I think of it only as I have always known it: as my place of freedom, my place to live without purpose other than to enjoy myself, my place to sit and think.

There is a spot on the cliff at the end of the lane where a meadow gives itself over to the sea. There the earth simply crumbles, the rocks below catching it, the sea beyond slowly moving farther from the land. (When my mother was young, the cliff ended in a dirt road; it wound along the precipice, letting cars pass along the wide point of land. As a child, I remember seeing the remnants of that car path—just a few inches you could walk on, dead-ending into shrubbery before you could reach the very tip of the point.)

On that cliff, in that place where earth gives way to rock and sea, there is a spot I have returned to yearly, often monthly, and there I have returned to my self. It is an opening in the honey suckle; a tufty patch of grass amidst low bushes; and though it has shrunk with time it has remained there, still easy to find. I have sat there and stood there, sometimes lightly clad, sometimes decked out in full fleece or wool. I have sat there and stood there, sometimes for just a moment, sometimes for hours on end. I have sat there and stood there, each time saying a silent hello to my ocean, each time saying a silent hello to all the past selves that surround me there. I sit there or stand there and time is both forgotten and accentuated—when I am there, I have never left that spot; when I am there, I am the new sum total of everywhere I’ve ever been.

That spot, this place, they are my signpost in life. Here I sit quietly and reinvigorate myself; I revisit all the past me’s who have been here and, when I depart, I take them with me; I take the lessons they’ve learned and the experiences they’ve had, the heartache and the bliss they have felt; I take all of this quietly away inside me.

To go to a place each year, to measure yourself and your life against its longevity, to take strength and pleasure from that—something in all that gives birth to my joy. This is where my heart lives, you can tell—where I come to reflect on my contentment; where I come to acknowledge just how much I have lived and to look forward to all that lies ahead.

put my finger on it

Today I finally put my finger on what makes living on the peninsula feel so significantly different than living in San Francisco. It's not just the weather—the lack of fog, the presence of warm nights, the chorus of crickets chirping outside my open window. It's not just the surroundings, which here are flat, which here include more grass than a San Franciscan can ever imagine seeing outside of a park, which here include squirrels and raccoons and other critters, which here include driveways, oh so blessed many driveways, such easy street parking, that I can overlook the fact that the cars filling all the parking spots are BMWs. That the place itself is different is not surprising; the thing that strikes me is just how much the difference is also in the people. And what gets me about them is not that they are all so wealthy, though they are; it's not that they are all so preppy, though they are; it's that so many of them—or any of them—are over the age of 45. If one thing more than even the fog and the hills makes San Francisco a unique place in my mind, it's the youth of the its inhabitants, so many of them ranging in age from wee little guy to parent of wee little guy. Even in Noe Valley, aka family central, my oldest neighbors had kids in high school. Anyone older than that I rarely saw.

morning at Island Lake

It was like waking up at the uppermost point of the world. I crawled out of the tent, tugging my hat down to cover my ears, slipping my socked feet into my boots, and arose to face a sky full of sunlight. Around me circled a horseshoe-shaped ridge of crumbling mountains; around me circled a horse-shoe shaped ridge of low hills that blocked the wind. As I climbed up the rocks, summiting the small hillside, I looked down over Island Lake. Its surface moved to and fro; small breezes pushed it this way and that so that ripples sometimes collided. The tiny waves reflected dots of light back at me; they glimmered as I watched.

During the night, the wind had whipped around us, causing the side of the tent to slap me repeatedly now and then. It was so loud you could hear it coming, rising. There were no leaves up here for it to rustle; it was not their shimmying that I heard; it was just the loud whisper of the wind itself. In the morning, it had subsided, but perched up high as I was now, I could see it move on the water, and I could hear it coming and going, zinging around the basin in which I and this lake were seated. Now and then a bird chirped. A yellow jacket buzzed in its arrival, then disappeared. Otherwise, it was just the wind, the water, and myself observing the start of this day.

As the sun broadened its reach across the mountains, I studied their bodies. Mostly gray, with a section of red on the far left end, their crests looked like they might crumble into pieces at any moment. Scree and boulders covered all surfaces. Even the smoother areas were lacerated, as though Picasso had had a hand in designing them. Here and there, a ribbon of quartz glowed in the midst of the hard granite. These were uninviting walls for hiking; but they were elegant for surroundings.

Much of our hike up to Island Lake had trekked us over smoother faces of the granite—pillowy stretches of hard stone, curved in places, pock-marked in others, deeply grooved and chasm'd in some stretches. We had gotten off the trail, following cairns that proved to be more decorative than directional, and ascended to greater heights than necessary to reach the chain of three lakes that was our destination. As we made our way over the crest of rock beyond which we knew we'd see water, we headed downward into the basin, finding the creek we should have walked alongside much of the way. It was a beautiful sight, that slow trickling of water amidst solid granite—moistening the surface without drenching it, moistening my dry throat. I had not wanted to drink all the water I carried until I saw the blue confirmation of more lying ahead.

When we reached Twin Lakes, we found a small peninsula and dropped our packs. My back was aching; I lay on the rock and stretched it flat. I dipped my fingers in the water. I removed my boots. What a way to take a break.

Soon we moved deeper into the basin at the back of which Molly promised our lake to be waiting. I couldn't see it from even this distance—couldn't see where it must be, where I knew it to be. But soon enough we circled past Boomerang Lake; we trudged down thin paths that eked a way through bushes of Indian paintbrush; we crossed a narrow stone bridge; and then we'd reached it, the long strip of glacial water called Island Lake.

In the morning, studying its layout, I figured it got its name from the small spurts of rock that stretched into the water or surfaced in the midst of it. On each one grew lush beds of tall grass, which beckoned for me to take my socks off and walk through them with bare feet. On each one grew pink tufts of mountain heather. On some stood the thick body of a pine tree, massive in opposition to its short arms and stubby needles, half barren but half thriving, diligently withstanding the regular rushes of mountain air, the chill of the water that its roots drank from, the intensity of the sun that beat down on it.

When we arrived we had gone swimming. We had immersed our selves to our knees—then hesitated. We had immersed ourselves to our waists—then hesitated. Finally we submerged ourselves completely, losing our breath a little, losing control of our heart beats momentarily. The chill was overpowering, but it was worth it. In the morning, seated above those same frigid waters, I could not wait to get back in.

After breakfast we did swim again, the temperature seeming slightly less dreadful in the lulls between gusts of wind. We swam and we awoke; we tidied the space in which we had sprawled our belongings; we said a silent thank you to the place for being so hospitable. Then we headed toward home, descending the mountain just as indirectly as we'd climbed it, building up blisters and bruises as we trudged across sheer faces of stone to find the trail once again. Molly has a nose for directions, so I never felt lost; I enjoyed the adventure of feeling our way out; and I appreciated that at the end of the excursion, the shores of Wright's Lake opened up a spot for a picnic and one final swim before we returned to civilization.

getting back into a backpack

It's not the kind of memory you bother to hold on it; but it's in there somewhere, so it comes back easily when, after all these years, the action repeats itself. You finish filling the backpack; you marvel at its height; and then stupidly you just lift it, thinking you can just put on such a large, strangely-shaped beast and go on with your usual one foot after the next routine. Instead, as soon as your second arm slips through the loop of the armhole, the pack totters, and you totter, and this time you don't fully fall over like you did that first try half a lifetime ago, but you totter and chuckle, well remembering the surprise of it back then and thinking you should've known better, you should've remembered how to do this. You chuckle, tug on the appropriate cords to tighten that sucker securely to your back, and turn to face the mirror. It's taller than you, it's wider than you; you are sure you could have packed it better. But regardless, you are grinning at yourself in the mirror, because it's been a goddam long time since you went into the wilderness like this -- to stay for a few days, not just for an afternoon, not just for day trips from a hotel or B&B or cabin but from sleeping on the ground, in a tent, like you really mean it -- and you're excited. You remember how much you once loved doing this, how satisfying you know it is to see parts of this Earth that one can't get to with a car or just by walking in off the street, and you know that even though this will be a short trip, it will be a good re-entry point. You are sure, even before going, that you will return to this. You moved all the way across the country for this, after all—you moved all the way across the country to regain your outdoorsyness. And after three years in California, it's about damn time you do!

(More on the excursion when I return...)

this suburban life

These are the sounds around me now: the slow traversing of a plane across the sky; the chirping of a bird; the distant joyful yelling of children riding cardboard down a slide (I know where they are, even if I cannot see them); the on-again-off-again rustling of thousands of leaves shimmying against their neighbors above; the humming of car engines; the soft buzzing of a bee; the tic-tic-ticking as the breeze inches the wooden door at the back of the yard further and further open.

Beside me, lemons fatter than baseballs drip like heavy decorations from the extended tips of branches. Behind me, a weeping birch tree drips heart-laden tendrils downward toward my hair; a vine grows along the fence, pushing into my surroundings vibrantly red, tubular flowers that look like brass horns even if they are too small to make any songs. Sun fills half of the yard; shade the rest. The fading leaves of purple hydrangeas look cheerfully at me; above them, the long arms of my grandmother's wind chimes shine in the daylight and swing slightly but remain silent.

This is how I used to live—seated in the backyard, reading, writing, noticing the little details, keeping myself quietly entertained. As a child, I would never have been so surprised as I was one night recently to come face-to-face with an enormous raccoon right in the middle of my driveway; I would never have stared at him so long, nor wondered about his intentions. He was commonplace once; now, he is an at-first-spooky-but-soon-satisfying reminder of where I am living. Of how I am living. Here, in suburbia, where I am frightened by the plethora of BMWs parked on the street, the preppyness of the mothers, the closedness of shops on Sundays, I am also very happy; for the natural world abounds here, and the sun shines, and with it the air grows warm, not foggy or appallingly windy or cool; and the streets are walkable; the whole town is walkable; and I have nothing really to do here, not knowing more than one person in town, and so I am not overwhelmed with plans as I have been the past few years. I have nothing to do here and so I am doing all kinds of things I used to always do, like reading, and writing, and noticing the little details as I sit in the warm sun. San Francisco did not leave me dying to live in suburbia, but now that I am, I am finding all its good sides. There is an intense peacefulness to living like this. About that I cannot complain.

placing the pieces

Settling into a studio apartment, especially once that's half as big as the last studio you lived in, is like completing a 4,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. It takes a few days to find all the edge pieces, and as you do, nestling books into book shelves and food into cupboards, you start to think about where the inside pieces will fit. But just building the border of the puzzle doesn't do you much good in that regard; one at a time, you have to find a way to slot each remaining piece in. So you ruminate. You push things that seem like they might fit together toward each other, but you let them hover, not locking anything in until you are sure. Delightfully, there is a point at which you suddenly see that the stereo should sit here and not there, and that frees up a hole on the wall for your favorite artwork, and then it's clear that another piece of artwork goes ever here. And then you have walls that look like the walls of a home, and then you have a bedroom that feels less like a booby trap and more like a place to put your feet up, especially now that you've cleared both sides of the sofa of inside pieces; and now you have music, with speakers that are plugged in, and so, you think, tonight perhaps you will finally get that thing that all this unfinished placement has prevented: a lot of sleep.

quote of the day (upon discussing my dating (non?)prospects)

"Flakes should only exist in cereal."
--Julia