Upstate
Currently reading:
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Stories of Horror, edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto
Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück
Books finished this week: 0
Middlegame is good, if a bit confusing for my brain, but she is also long.
Library updates:
I spent a lot of time on trains this week. I mean, I usually commute three days a week, so I’m on trains a lot during a lot of weeks, I guess, but it felt like more this week. Maybe because these trains took me out of the five boroughs.
We had a “work from anywhere” week at work, and I decided to spend a few days——quick, make a guess!!——up in Cold Spring. I spent a good amount of my time working from my room at the B&B or the coffeeshop, but I got to walk around more in the afternoons and evenings and enjoy drinks with new friends and food at old haunts. I meant to get more work done than I did (oops), but staring at the Hudson made me feel okay about that.
I then spent most of Friday morning traveling even farther north: Metro-North to Poughkeepsie, and then Amtrak to Hudson. As I draft and post this post, I’m at another Little Nights Big Weekend, this one up at Hilltown Commons in Rensselaerville. The trip up from Cold Spring wasn’t bad at all, and I spent a lot of time either reading or staring out various train windows, and then spent a few hours in Hudson feeling like the mysterious drifter who just blew into town until I got to meet the rest of the LNBWers back at the train station that evening.
But I had a lot of time to reflect on just how big New York State is, and how much it has to offer. Especially on the Friday night drive from Hudson to campus, when we drove through Greenville, a place I spent a lot of time as a kid, and a place I want desperately to return to. We drove past the turn-off for the road on which my grandparents’ summer home sits, and the drive-in, and the grocery story that once had a miniature train winding around the massive space. The city and Long Island have equal claim as my home, but these vast, beautiful places up here also mean so much to me.
It’s gotten harder for me the last few years to answer what feels like a common-ish question: beach or mountains? I love the beach. I need to be able to visit the ocean multiple times a year, regardless of temperature, to feel something. There is absolutely nothing better than reading a book in a chair on the sand in a cool ocean breeze while saltwater drip-dries off your skin. And I love watching icy-cold waves rush in against a flat gray snow sky in winter.
But there’s something about the mountains: their height, their majesty, the bare rockface and copses of trees. The sunsets over a wide river. The cooler air the higher you go. The small towns nestled into the landscape. The twisting train tracks, the dark winding roads. Maybe I’ll live in the city forever because I can easily access both. Living in-between, I don’t have to choose.
Or maybe I’ll finally make a choice one day. You’ll be the first to know.
Closing thoughts:
Go where you’re happy.
Total books read from the Moratorium Library: 174
(Total books added to the Moratorium Library: 346)
As I’ve said many times before, it isn’t a trip up to Cold Spring without a stop at Split Rock Books.
And I got to discover the Spotty Dog in Hudson!
