The Dispatch from Vogel State Park, Cabin #6

Well, Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, 2025. Here I sit in a very familiar place- a place that I started to love when I was first finding my community as an adult person, and continued to love as I also somehow managed to have a family that is now on the cusp of starting to shrink down a little bit itself, as my girls start to spread their wings and find their own communities in the world.

It is so very much to contemplate.

I’m trying to finish Jeff Vandermeer’s Absolution, which I am really enjoying, but also. . . That novel is such a strange dark headspace to be in. Especially on inauguration day, too. And have y’all looked at the weather? Crazy weather for me to have gone north with my family. But last year was such chaos; weather for the whole year, Rog’s big brain surgery and dental surgery recovery, and kid needs, and everything. And I am very much realizing that we are on a countdown of years remaining for family traditions to be enacted. The babies that I nursed beside the fire in the cabin that used to stand where this one now stands are Sophomores in high school now. Part of me is so deeply grateful that they are about to start driving themselves. They have their own passions and their own stressors and hopes and dreams which is how it is supposed to be.

But, man, I hope I have been able to give them enough of a framework of understanding of how to relate back to a still point, whether they find it in a state park cabin in the Georgia mountains on the coldest day of winter, sharing charcuterie with their family while working on science projects, or in a kayak in the middle of a river, or on a Florida beach.

So we did this trip; the old family and found-family tradition of a Vogel cabin for MLK Jr. weekend. The money for paying for two nights in a row- which was required to get a cabin on a holiday weekend, even doing it the late way we’re doing it (taking an extra day off because of sports commitments Jas had on Saturday) was tight. So we got the smallest dog cabin, even though it is tight with Roger’s nightly Parkinson's perambulations and Alfie’s need for a large safe crate space of his own. And I am so happy to be able to be here. I have done my once-a-year cooking of a big pancake breakfast for all of us. I’ve napped and read by the fire and chatted about experimental methodology with the girls who are using the cabin wifi to work on a science project that they are doing with their student astronaut club.

The very first time I came to this place, it was with three good friends, and I desperately needed a still point. I had just returned to the second semester of my 1L year of law school, and I needed to remember what was important. In many ways law school felt easier than my biology degree had been, but the other law students all fought so hard for position grade-wise. My first semester of grades were not the cum laude grades I had pulled down in undergrad. They were middle of the road. I was very interested in the material in law school. It was interesting. But I also felt like the number of hours of work it would take to make straight As was just untenable.

But that road trip helped me recenter. And now 24 years later, the cold beloved mountains have helped me recenter again. I have no doubt that this year is also going to be a wild one. But I am going to do my best to remember the beautiful places and still points that make it all worthwhile.