2022

Compiling details

Dec 29, 2022

A yellow boat arriving to a floating dock. The water is deep blue, and there are green hills in the background. — 2. Spending a month along the Saguenay River. (L’Anse-Saint-Jean, Québec)

Since 2017, I’ve compiled a year end list of 100 things that made my year. (Like some other list-based ideas I love, I got this one from Austin Kleon.) For me, making this list is a project rooted in gratitude, but which also reveals larger life themes and movements. 2020 and 2021 were a little rough. I wasn’t able to reach 100 items either year, and the lists I did make reflected a stagnancy and sense of confinement brought about in part, but definitely not in whole, by the pandemic. This year, thankfully, was so, so different, and I could easily have written a list twice as long. I feel very lucky to have had so much joy this year, and I’m grateful to be excited (and not just relieved) about going into the next again. My yearly list isn’t written to be shared, but here are a few, with pictures, that felt shareable:

Sunrise on a rocky beach. There are lobster boats clustered in the water. — 92. Watching the lobster boats at sunrise at Lamoine State Park, Maine

Kate, wearing a blaze orange knit cap and hiking clothes, stands on a rocky mountain smiling at the camera. Behind Kate are evergreens, and behind the evergreens is a view to the horizon of islands and water. — 47. Hiking every damn day (Beech Mountain Trail, Acadia National Park, Maine)

Ocean and sky, with a large granite rock and evergreen branches in the foreground. It is high tide and the water level is very high. — 22. Being by the ocean these past few months (Barred Island Trail, Deer Isle, Maine)

A highway with a large yellow sign on the right with a picture of a moose. The sign reads "En cas d'intrusion Composez 511" — 97. Getting to practice my French in Québec (and parts of New Brunswick)

A large mounted bison head hangs on a wall. The bison head looks a little off -- the fur is a bit strange, and the face feels not quite right, maybe. — 26, 43. Public libraries saving me again and again with printing, wifi, A/C. (Bison in Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill, Maine)

Blue water and sky with an island spanning the length of the horizon in the far distance. In the foreground are green plants. Near the foreground in the water are two tiny rocky islands. — 32. Quoddy Head State Park, Lubec, Maine

A converted classroom, with wooden floors and green and black chalkboards. One chalkboard reads "Welcome Kate!" There are two folding tables, each with a desk chair. One table has computer equipment, and the other has art supplies, two water bottles, envelopes, and tarot cards — 6,7. My residency studio for the next two months

Thanks now and always to all the friends who supported me and had my back this year. If you sent video messages, sent poems, intended to send poems, replied with either enthusiasm or loving concern to my travel plans, sent long emails, had long phone calls, had long zoom calls, read my MFA thesis(!), or mailed a sim card to Canada, you also made my year. I’m so grateful for you, truly.

And thank you to everyone who has read and subscribed to this newsletter in these past eight weeks. I love getting your messages and I’m really thrilled you’re enjoying it. I hope you had a good 2022, but if not, it’s almost over. I’ll see you in the new year.

Kate

Lost in the Forest

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