Dear Readers,
Hello from the comfort of my bed. No, not a truck bed—a real, fluffy, non-air mattress with five pillows and two duvets. Gone are the nights of traffic exhaust seeping into my tent, and waking up to the hum of the highway. No more stopping to Zoom in a tire shop parking lot or pee in a bush. No more hot-spotting or windshield sunburns. No more tarantulas crawling over my campsite, or animals scurrying around the tent—just two Newfoundlands snoring in the kitchen. I can even cook in an oven.
Alas, I am no longer on the road. I say that with equal parts relief and nostalgia (okay maybe 60/40). These last few months have been a true adventure, amazing and insane in every way. I confronted some truths at once uncomfortable and beautiful about the American experiment, as well as my own, all against the backdrop of towering red rock buttes, fracturing into pink and orange and purple at dusk. As infuriating and nonsensical as a lot of it was, it was also awesome, in the truest sense of its definition, and I feel grateful to have traversed this country during such a historic time.
I encountered way too much QAnon and learned what it really meant to be a country of guns. I laughed really hard and cried even more. I turned 26 the day Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, drinking tequila in the Appalachians of Kentucky. I attended several Trump rallies and miraculously didn’t get Covid. Human nature was as wild as mother nature. I watched a mama grizzly bear and her three cubs playing at sunset near the Grand Tetons, and I shivered in my sleeping bag under a curtain of desert stars, glinting the weight of the universe. As much as I will miss America’s wondrous vistas over New York’s winter grey, I must say: damn is it nice not to be chopping cilantro on a tailgate in the freezing cold.
Even though I’m no longer on the road, Contra Post will still live on, and remain a place for my writing as life turns into a new era we don’t understand yet. I have so much more I want to explore, and so much reporting still left on the cutting room floor. I still have an essay on the back burner about being at the Capitol riot, about coming home, fear and loneliness, love in the time Covid, and everything in between.
But first, I need to take a breather. I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally. Choosing to hit the road in the middle of a pandemic was probably the most destabilizing thing I could’ve done, and I vastly underestimated that. January offered no solace. And so I need a month or two to organize my notes and my head and ready Contra Post for 2021. Until that happens, I’ve put all Contra Post subscriptions on pause until I resume posting.
Thank you, truly, for all of your interest and support. We’ve had one hell of a year. But having a place to write, and a community to share with, made 2020 a challenge worth accepting. I can’t wait to take on the next one.
Til soon,
Casey
