At times the rain could be maddening, the repetition. And it got so dark you had to watch your mood or you could slip under. I thought back to our time in Salthill, outside of Galway, when our family came undone from the dark rains of December.

These bleak scenes, driving around town in the rain. Working my thumbnail under an orange peel as the car warms up. Flood watch followed by a wind warning. The foothills mostly swallowed by clouds. Oddly I wanted to be out in it, to experience something real.

Fiddling with the windshield wipers, how the clouds crept over the foothills. I’d been in that very valley. Traffic moving slow.

In late November we left Scotland for Belfast, suffered a week there, then down to Dublin and over to the west, by Galway. That’s where things fell apart for us as a family. We’d been on the road for two months and the kids were really young. We’d brought too much stuff; the car was weighted down. Each week we’d arrive somewhere new, settle in, pack out, then get back on the road. Each time I drove I had to remind myself which side of the road to be on. Sometimes I got it wrong.

I resolved to quit drinking for a month come January, which took some of the enjoyment out of it knowing I was being watched. It’s like we had some tryst, alcohol and me.

Unemployed for several months with not much to do I was resolved to write my first manuscript. I figured all I needed was time and space but it just wouldn’t come. I wrote by hand in the dark every morning, thinking over time the ritual would bring it. Every day I stewed but could not produce.

One especially dark and windy morning I went walking out a long causeway to an uninhabited island. Surely with the waves spraying over the rocks and the starkness of it all the story would come to me, the thing I needed to finally unblock myself. But it never would. Only the slate gray of the bay against the lead gray of the sky and this godawful place, Mutton Island. Why would it not come?

The wind made the rain blow sideways in sheets. Though the sun broke through it still rained. It was a theatrical kind of rain you’d expect to see in a film with people on a boat at sea during a storm. An angry, persistent rain. The repetition was maddening.

After it stopped the light was so low in the sky it made all the rain drops look jeweled as they dripped off the gutters. And the branches looked furry with moss and lichen.

I pulled a large branch out of a tree and set it aside for my rustic garden bed border collection. Frogs croaked. The green was the same as Ireland, electric. The clouds moved so fast it could make you dizzy. Crows and raptors soared like kites. The wind blew so hard the skies were all blue and the sun shone like summer, though close to the horizon. It looked like it could set by 3. All the colors were magnificent. Somewhere a chainsaw buzzed. I clapped and spit and drank in the fresh, sweet air.

I did laps around our house admiring it from different angles. I loved our home. My flannel was still wet from my morning walk and I felt in touch.

How could it be the story I was trying to tell was too much to get a hold of and still not enough? How could it feel so far away if the only place it came from was me?

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Travelogues

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, pacific northwest, writing process