Last Updated on June 23, 2022 by James Dziezynski
I remember a day in the blur that was 2020 when my hands turned to stone.
It was early September. I was working on our mountain property cutting down trees and chipping branches. The seasons-long project was almost at an end. I had already removed 35 trees, a mix of pines, firs, and junipers.
I had forgotten my work gloves that day and didn’t anticipate below-freezing temperatures, especially given the punishing heat that throttled the mountains all summer. But there was work to be done.
Frozen fog and sheets of icy mist swirled in the 30-degree temps, coating our 9000-watt generator—and all the tools I wasn’t using—in a skin of lumpy, clear ice. Mixed in the frosty humidity was a steady stream of ash, sometimes flickering with defiant orange embers, strange atmospheric bedfellows.
In near-zero visibility, deep rumbles reverberated in the cloud cover above, growling like an unseen dragon coming ever nearer. Low, mechanical hums grew exponentially louder until reaching a deafening climactic roar, drowning out the ear-bludgeoning clamor of the woodchipper. Windows on the house flexed from the powerful sound waves. A few hundred feet overhead, slurry bombers raced to spit deliveries of fire retardant on two of Colorado’s most violent wildfires burning no more than a dozen miles away.
Our land sat in a frozen inversion pocket, a weather phenomenon where hot and cold air change roles. In an inversion, lower altitudes take on the brunt of the chill while higher elevations heat up. It was a fitting metaphor to the confused, everything-you-know-is-wrong theme of 2020.
Register Your Complaints
I’ve been reluctant to write extensively—at least publicly—throughout 2020. Nearly every thought I put to paper ended up sinking into a mire of grievances. While I’m not afraid to write about the lows of life, there comes a time when adding to the chorus of complaints only serves as a personal catharsis, even if those sentiments are shared.
I can condense those feelings efficiently now, from a distance.
Profound disappointment in the gullibility of my fellow Americans, paired with an ugly, ruthless, contagious lack of empathy set the stage politically. Covid-19 remained a public health crisis, disguised by contemptible candidates and dull citizens as something other than scientific reality. Nastiness carried the day, and ignorance flourished. The decent, mindful majority had to contend with a circus of bottom feeders dragging ever more people into the enticing depths of depravity.
And then the fires came, raging from August to November. They circled our new home on three sides, threatening to harm the project that itself was long since drained of joy, still needing to be seen to the end.
Finally, inevitable sorrows that afflict all but the best years didn’t miss a shift.
The grandmother I had spent dreamy Maine summers with in my youth and loved dearly passed away. Covid blocked the closure of mourning. Two friends that had been close companions in younger days passed away far too early and likewise were not mourned. Errors, shady business, and dumb bad luck rocketed the cost of our home build. Cars broke, dogs got sick, tooth fillings dislodged, and plenty of minor disruptions were impacted by amplified stress.
All this diversified my worry like a horrible stock portfolio. I worked non-stop to put dents in the ridiculous costs associated with building a home during a pandemic. A full-time editorial job paired with a full-time book-writing job, accompanied by full-time freelance work was a source of constant enervation. Every other spare hour was spent taking on home-building tasks myself, to save money, at the expense of critically needed rest and recovery.
The only countermeasure that held true was the generosity and kindness of good friends, who time and time again went above and beyond the call of mere friendship. Even with limited possibilities (for those of us who took the health crisis seriously), they kept my sanity moored in the harbor of the healthy, even when the lines looked ready to snap.
Wordless
Collateral damage from all these circumstances wrung the whimsy from my writing and I just stopped.
For the first time that I can remember, even back in early childhood, I did not write for my own pleasure. Sometimes that would be blog articles, or else video game FAQs, or else adventurous write-ups, or really anything that captured my imagination. Privately, there were always journals, poems, and bullet lists. Emails and letters to friends. Cards to my wife. Lyrics to music I was crafting.
This was no mere writer’s block.
Ideas were there, metaphorically trapped under ice and ash. I was resigned to their dormancy, fully aware that some dreams, as Lanston Hughes somberly noted, simply explode. After all, a dulling of instincts has doomed countless writers, both known and unknown. 2020’s truth was stranger than fiction, thus there was no way to mentally account for its arrival.
There was no way around it, only through it.
A Dream of Frozen Grasshoppers
I remember a video of a giant, Chinese grasshopper. Or, I should say, I sort of remember it.
The aggregate of too many nights of poor sleep has diminished my normally-pretty-good memory, so I don’t remember where. YouTube? Discovery Channel? 6th-grade biology?
Regardless.
This grasshopper’s big trick was how it endured winters, namely frozen in a chunk of solid ice. For months, it was literally encased in frozen water, looking to all the world to be a cryogenic corpse.
As you have already guessed, with spring’s thaw, the entombed creature twitched back to life. After a few hours of sunlight, it was fully reanimated. It dutifully resumed grass-hopping and fulfilling whatever purpose an oversized Chinese insect is driven to do.
I give the bugger credit. Its bizarre strategy of self-preservation works. The parallel isn’t terribly well-aligned, but that’s kind of the point—I’ll take imperfect inspiration at this point. If a groggy grasshopper is as good as it gets, so be it.
The very presence of this blog is a good sign. Parts of my brain are thawing out. Survival mode has de-escalated to “lots of stressful concerns” mode. Hibernating habits are slowly reappearing: guitar practice, better conversations with my wife, quality dog time, video games, reading books that aren’t grimly serious, building trails, and connecting with old friends.
Our house is mostly done, imperfect but liveable. Great undigested chunks of 2020 are either being dealt with or abandoned. There’s a pulse to the creative drive again, faint, but detectable.
If this blog is cathartic, so be it.
There are interesting things still illuminated, more stories to tell, and the cautious aspiration of better days ahead. Frozen things thaw, fires recede.
Landscapes change.
Give this grasshopper a little sun and see the antenna of inspiration wiggle! Watch the thorax of thought throb with life! Behold the uh, midleg of imagination, stretch its… feet?
Look, it’s been a while.
Clunky writing is nonetheless a vital sign, one that I feared might not have come back at all. Even if I’m a slow, dim-witted grasshopper, at least I’m finally facing the sun again.
