My New England Essence

Once again, from a distance of half a century, E.B. White sums up my thoughts completely. Hello Winter.

A Report in January

Allen Cove, January 30, 1958

Margaret Mitchell once made a remark I have treasured. Someone asked her what she was "doing," and she replied, "Doing? It's a full-time job to be the author of Gone With the Wind." I remembered this cheerful statement this morning as I lay in bed, before daylight, marshaling in my head the problems and projects and arrangements of the day and wondering when I would again get a chance to "do" something - like sit at a typewriter. I felt a kinship with Ms. Mitchell and comforted myself with the pleasing thought that just to live in New England in winter is a full-time job; you don't have to "do" anything. The idle pursuit of making-a-living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.