How do you thaw? - #127

Melt it out.

Everyone in these parts departs tomorrow. Spring Break commences the day after the resort closes, and with it, Off Season officially begins. Being connected to a resort town as your primary source of entertainment and groceries means you work on that organism’s schedule. If, come April, you want to see a movie or go out to dinner or, I don’t know, go to the dentist, you can drive the 70 miles to a bigger city to do so, because the waitstaff, the chefs, the ticket person, whoever loads the films into the sole projector, and yes, the dentist, are all gone. 

In one person’s Reddit search for the perfect mountain town to move their family to, their first demand was this: “A town that feels alive year round. I realize most places have seasonal spikes but I don’t want to live somewhere that is a ghost town on the shoulder months. Amazing winter AND summer vibe is a must.” 

A must, y’all. 

But I think this person underestimates the joys of a ghost town when no one’s around and nothing’s available and there’s not one thing to do except quietly exist without spending money. Though, saying it out loud… 

One person in the thread did suggest my resort town, which was readily laughed down for other reasons, but I laughed it down solely because one could never describe this town as “alive” in April or in May. Sure, October and November are also “off season” but they’re spicier. Trails are open. Things happen. Kids are in school. The locals are indeed enjoying the quiet after a riotous summer of tourists in overlanders and overnighters. 

But come April, the number one topic of discussion is “where are you going” because surely you’re not staying here the whole time. So far we’ve heard Bali, Fiji, Portugal, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and Alaska, just to name a few. People go on such big trips it makes you wonder if you should open up a dog hotel. People leave not just because the businesses close and the gondola shuts off and the runs aren’t open, but because April and May are mud winter. It’s time to either get to a beach, or go north for one final ski expedition. Everything here is quite literally filthy or skied off. 

I, however, will not be gone. I will be here, gestating, for the entirety of the Off Season. Given that I’ve passed the 32-week mark, and babies born between 32 and 34 weeks are only considered “moderately preterm”, I’ve moved into the fuck around and find out part of pregnancy. (Not to be mistaken for the literal fuck around and find out of conception.) That said, the baby seems perfectly comfortable in his black box of growth, jamming his little skull into my ribs. 

Mountain towns seem to have created their own little Europe in the enveloping cloud of American capitalism, and you simply have to commend it, appreciate it, and learn to revel in it. While East Coasters are intermittently discovering their bare legs again, we’re waking up to five fresh inches of useless snow that will melt into a dirt-laden mess three hours after the sun climbs over the ridge. Rivulets of brown water cascade along and across the dirt road, splattering up the backside and undercarriage of anything on it: you, your car, your dog. Every walk is followed by a bath. You wear the same pants every day merely because why get another pair dirty. The only person who’s going to see you is doing the same thing. 

It would be futile to deny the coalescence of Spring, the slowing of town, and the return of life to this valley all coinciding with me giving birth. Since moving here, one of my early Spring practices has been to revisit my photos from the past year to confirm when in fact Spring does show up. I have not yet been able to override decades of expecting it in April. Here is a photo from May 30, 2023. 

Missing my sun dog.

Coop and I are enjoying the sun, looking out over a leafless vista. May 30, 2024 is my due date. 

Here is a photo of the cabin just a week later on June 8. 

The leaves burst into existence, blindingly green to complement the swath of yellow below. All of Off Season is working up to this. It’s construction season before the trees emerge from spring’s scaffolding, ready to shade and glimmer. And this year, when the leaves come out, so will a baby. 

(Laughs to herself, uncomfortable.)

This year, I know not to expect the leaves until May ends. I know to smile warmly at fronds of grass emerging from the melt, unaware they will wake frozen the next day. I know the next two months will not be beautiful or vibrant. I know to enjoy the sun for its efforts and forgive the storms making their last ditch efforts at the snowpack. 

In past years, I’ve asked in this newsletter how you too can embrace an off season for yourself — one where unrelenting productivity, the demand for new leaves, new branches, and new blooms is forsaken for something more like melting. That has to come first, after all. 

There’s this massive mound of snow behind our house created by the plow trying to find somewhere to shove all of it. All winter it sits atop the hill like a child on their tiptoes asking how tall am I now, how tall am I now. And this week, it started to melt. But in its melt, it held its shape because all winter long, the plow has not just been pushing snow, but digging up the ground beneath it and piling it all into a massive conglomerate that is now showing itself to be as much displaced dirt as snow. 

Before anything can be done about the dirt, its white glue needs a thorough thaw, a complete melting of the structural ice within it. 

It’s like Spring Cleaning. You cannot wipe the countertops until you put away the dishes sitting on them. To consider these the same task is like getting a promotion without the pay raise — it’s not right. April and May’s jobs here are not to be the beginning of spring, but to be the end of winter. To ask more of them is unfair. To ask a ghost town to thrive is to only ask for trouble. So I won’t be.

Instead of asking in these months what I can plant, I will ask what I can thaw. I’ve planted enough. I’ve grown a heart, lungs, fingernails, hair, eyes, skin, bones, and several bra sizes. It’s time to thaw.