Allowing for Enchantment

Some field notes from a week in Puerto Rico

02.14

Good morning and happy Valentines Day (or not, if you’re strongly anti-corporate holiday. As it happens, I’m a cheeseball and closet romantic, though I’ve been told it’s actually quite obvious…)

As of this writing I am propped up outside on our five-by-five foot patch of a porch. It’s unseasonably warm here, birdsong trilling and daffodils pushing up for all the world like spring is around the corner. I feel what I think most folks feel about it—a strange relief for the respite from harsh winter conditions and also a deep disquiet due to the fact that winter hasn’t really arrived at all. I’m still waiting for that big snowstorm, to ski at Whitegrass and sled the monster hill on Davis & Elkins campus and strap on my yaktrax for a moonlit walk, icy roads be damned.

But while it’s here, I’m soaking in the sunlight. It is, after all, a gentle transition from the tropical conditions Mike and I experienced just one week ago in Puerto Rico. Out here on the porch the first light of day slants in just right, so that the rays hit me square in the face when my back is against the corner post. The warmth registers as both clarifying and revivifying, clearing me out even as it bolsters my defenses. I’m drinking it in like nectar, guava nectar specifically, since I was introduced to that pink-tasting, fruity delight in Puerto Rico and I’m sorry but fuck do I miss Puerto Rico.

What can I tell you about that trip, that isn’t already widely known? Aside from the fact that we got engaged (!!!) which is basically public knowledge by now due to the startlingly wide reaches of social media. It was no real secret to anyone close to us, though some may be surprised to learn that I was the one doing the initial proposing (I am eagerly awaiting Mike’s reciprocal proposal to me, as well.) But ultimately, it stood to reason that two lovers on the cusp of merging their physical lives should return from a tropical vacation with a promise to merge the rest of their lives, too. And anyway, I’ve been trying to marry Mike for awhile. Puerto Rico just seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.

What can I tell you about Puerto Rico? Isla del encanto, truly an island of enchantment. My memories are muddled, mojito-style: sensory impressions of balmy, salt-riddled winds; cerulean skies and turquoise beaches; emerald green, broad-leaved and bountiful banana and papaya trees; nightly orchestras of coqui frogs’ syncopated trilling in the misty jungle night; and the wide, powerful sweep of the whole Atlantic pummeling the coast, from the buttresses of old San Juan to the sudden, jagged cliffs at Cabo Rojo.

I could go on (and likely will, at various points…) I’ve loved many places I’ve visited, but rarely experienced such a compelling tug to return. I was just starting to dust off my rusty Spanish…! We were just getting used to Puerto Rican driving…! We had just found the best beach ever, in Luquillo, where $4 gets you stretches of white sand wrapping around a point with protected, clear, calm waters and the shadow of El Yunque looming in the background (we still need to explore so much more of El Yunque…!)

So if, in a year’s time, you come across an announcement saying that Mike and I have temporarily relocated to the jungle (El Yunque is a US National Forest, and Mike does for the Forest Service,) well, consider this fair warning. Am I kidding? Even I don’t really know.

Yearnings for humid jungle heat and turquoise beaches notwithstanding, I am happy to be home. Where is the emphasis here? I am happy to be home. I am happy to be home. Both ring equally true—the extent of my happiness and content is remarkable, as is the long-awaited feeling of being at home in Elkins. Truth be told, it will probably be some time before I really feel settled. This stands to reason, as it happens with any transition. And of course, as these things go, once I feel steady in one aspect of life, I’m sure something else will go awry or some new upheaval will present itself.

And so I’m here, choosing to bask in the sun and steady myself in simple pleasures. It can sound so goddamn trite and yet the pervading wisdom remains, that stillness and simplicity really are a kind of medicine, no matter how brief. Goodness knows we need some of that, really any kind of medicine around here, as Mike recovers from a gnarly bout of the stomach flu. The virus was likely picked up from travel and tension (turns out, even a week in paradise has its stressors! Erratic Puerto Rican driving styles, copious fried pinchos, and airport security, to name a few…) Between his unrelenting cramps brought on from illness, and my own butterfly tummy at starting a new job, we’ve had our share of ah—how do I put this lightly?—digestive upheaval.

Aaaaall this to say, I am very much looking forward to recovering some sense of rhythm and consistency. This certainly means regular newsletters again (!) But I’m also quite excited for all manner of steady practices: sourdough baking and fermented buckwheat pancake-making on Sundays; a daily yoga practice, if I can swing it; a return to running semi-regularly, in preparation for our upcoming half marathon in Canaan Valley; and the daily tending to our resident jungle, i.e. misting all the monstera and ferns and orchids eking out an existence in our parched, dry-heated home.

If all of the above hasn’t made it clear, I can be a real home body. And certainly, after so much movement, growth, and adventure recently, a chapter of retreat is warranted. There is so much I want to dig into, at a level of subtlety and depth that simply isn’t possible when life is exhilaratingly helter-skelter. Rest assured, the following newsletters will burrow into broad themes surrounding rejuvenation and the joys of simple, slow living. But as it stands I am already behind in the swing of the day; even in the quietest of times, somehow there is still movement.

Until next time,

<3A