cottage chronicles, part 1

storms, summer reads, writing prompts + other island updates

There’s an unspoken rule at the cottage that you don’t check the weather in advance. Ask about the forecast, and no one seems to know or care. An offhanded wave, a half shrug of the shoulders. The weather is the weather here, whether you check it or not. The one exception is when a storm’s coming. You can feel it before you see it. A heaviness in the air, the sky heaving under its own cumbersome weight. That’s your cue: Check radar, wind direction, lightning strikes, scan the digital skies for ETA, severity; the spinning green blob is heading your way.

Call your chickens home. Leave now or stay where you are. Get off the water before it hits.

One night the storm builds slowly, clouds massing purple like angry prunes on the western horizon, lightning flashing so deep inside the thunderheads that the thunder makes no sound. Darkness falls. The storm hovers in place for an hour, unmoving, so still it seems fake, a spectacle projected on a movie screen in the sky. The lake is flat, calm, poker-faced.

Watch the sky, you text your chickens.

Then the wind stirs, shifts, and you realize, not quickly enough, that the storm is not a performance designed for your entertainment—cue the dramatic light show!—but an actual meteorological event that’s barreling your way, so directly it’s as though your island has a target on it and your boathouse is the bullseye. Here it comes, slamming unforgivingly into the first landmass it reaches, shaking the metal roof so hard it seems like it might shear off. Within moments it seems fair to wonder, if only to yourself, will the roof fly off? Will we be filleted down the middle, eyes turned to the sky in bewilderment?

Tonight, at least, the answer is no. The storm is battering and hellacious but has other places to be, even as it appears to change its mind and circle back, briefly, from the east. Rain abates, then pummels, slashing through every open window—east, west, north, south—no direction spared. The storm pulls itself away, reluctantly, at last.

The next afternoon, the sky flattens to dull pewter, the sultry air sags with weariness. You’re onto it this time.

Leave now, you text the chickens.

In the channel out front, a power boat drifts casually under the darkening sky, its own chickens bobbing around in the water, laughing. A clap of thunder sends them scrambling for the ladder, not urgently enough. The engine revs and groans, the bow steeples into the air, straining against a sudden gust.

The wind is the front edge. Within moments, the lake is oceanic, white-crested waves rolling east in sets of three, kicking up spray that twirls into tiny water cyclones. The rain follows, a curtain of grey advancing across the lake. The far shore has disappeared. Look, it’s gone! you shout to the chickens, pointing toward the vanished land, giddy because all heads are accounted for. From the side porch, you watch a branch unhook from its trunk and sail through the air. Whoooo! The sound of surprise escaping your mouth sounds like wind.

The system passes, dragging the clouds by the tail; they’ll be gone by sunset. You know the storms’ rhythms even if this year already they seem wilder and more sudden. Twilight lingers a long time at this latitude, and the mosquitoes are slow to arrive. After the storm, a respite. Some islands have lost power. The chicken’s boats is half-sunk with water; you bail it by hand using an orange juice container with its top cut off. So many scoops-full you lose count. A tree branch has come to rest on the dock, far from any tree. Between this storm and the last one, the blueberry bushes got ripe.

It will be sunny, hot, and still; it will drizzle. Some nights will be so steamy you sleep on top of the sheet. The weather will be the weather, whether we check it or not.

The rules of the cottage are the rules of life: Watch the sky, keep your eyes open. Don’t forget to look up.

——

It’s the Fourth of July! Happy Birthday, America. I still believe in you—and us—to keep changing for the better. We have a ways to go.

In other news, summer reading: Here’s one for your list:

Exit Zero, a story collection by Marine-Helene Bertino, is fearless and weird in perfect proportions. Old boyfriends fall from the sky, a unicorn lives in the backyard. If you’re like me and enjoy fictions that don’t have to explain themselves, and authors generous and confident enough to let it rip, you’re in expert hands with Bertino. Here are a couple standout lines to borrow for your next writing prompts:

“This never happened.”

“They don’t tell you that in lying school.”

A well-read friend recommended Repetition, by the Swedish novelist Vigdis Hjorth. A writer friend gifted me a copy of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, part lyric poem, part autobiography somehow wrapped into 240 mediations on the color blue.

But first Whistler, by Ann Patchett.

Til next week!

xo katie