Nathan Oldham | Photographer & Writer

“Azzi Fudd’s shooting a three!” The girls behind me are louder than the rest of the bleachers when Fudd knocks one in. I’m not a good sports fan because I feel for our opponents who lose by 69 points but a win is a win. Better than the men’s game the day before when seven of our players had over three fouls and our top scorers took the day off. But the girls behind me are screaming whenever Fudd sinks a shot and the stadium is filled with girls and young women and old women rocking the dynastic white, blue, and red #5 Bueckers jersey. And I love that this stadium is filled with girls who have a 6’0” superhero to tilt their chin up to. That Gampel Pavilion is—for at least a few months every year—a sanctuary. A place for our kids to believe in women whose most enduring quality is the very fact of them being real. Because that’s what’s missing isn’t it— the almost-touchable court-side reality of hope? While world leaders fumble our future in musty courtrooms and hallowed offices, our actual future is dribbling the ball down court where she will stun the way she so often does: with a deep three, or a pivot and spin off the backboard—giving an entire stadium something real to believe in. And the future is also sitting—now standing—now screaming—in the bleachers, jerseys hanging to their knees, arms up, “Azzi Fudd for three!” Some of us are tired of witnessing the unprecedented, but not when it is this kind of defiant promise. This we will bear witness to and talk about for years to come, until one of these girls is an old woman wearing a tattered and old #5 jersey, cheering from the bleachers for her future way down there, the echo of a ball bouncing under the dome of Gampel forever. @uconnwbb @azzi35 @paigebueckers @ncaa

We Nutmeggers have a history of hiding our liberty deep within the trees out of the reach of kings and it seems we must do that again today. I only wish it weren’t this way.

The hard rain of acorns in early October mortar fire in the trees rough-cupped sable seeds brown star comets I gather and those that sink I gather again and take to the edge of the blacktop slab and scratch a small hole like a rodent and wait for rain to rupture the fruit wall and for the radicle to creep beneath the stone my own double agent and slow resistance and you ask what will you do when you are old and I will say sit in the shade of this oak I planted and when the world is done with me it belongs to the children.

They say the fog over the snow is sublimation—merely vapor lingering over a thawing New England like a river at flood the forever currency of matter slipping from the reach of aphelion. I must take care not to drift, for I too am matter and suspend above the winter in this deathless hiraeth.

Oh wandering god who slept upon dirt floors and washed grime from the feet of wretches, Oh lord of the tree and the cave and the stone rolled back, Oh dying god spooled in linen and wrapped within the roots of the earth, Oh lord of the promiscuous and reviled and defiled, Oh sand-writing god who drew fortification around the condemned with a dusty finger, Oh lord of the bruised reeds and unseen and refugee, Oh oil-slick god who bathed in the amber varnish of perfume and found it extraordinary, Oh lord of the leper and cancerous and confined, Oh threadbare god who walked amongst us, within our rivers, upon our waters, Oh lord of ravens and kings and annihilating mercy, Say to the four winds, come, and breathe.

I loved when we stood on top of Cadillac in Acadia watching a sunset in the west and thunderheads pushing north. I love the thousand times we wrapped around a child scared from his nightmares. I love the hands I held in ER visits and across airplane aisles. I love the way we hum Drew Holcomb songs driving on I84. I love the way we lean into each other after long days and breathe slowly. I love listening to you on the phone lifting up your lifelong friends. I love your cooking. I love your mothering. I love acting thirteen around you until you are exasperated and say oh my gosh you are such a child but you’re laughing too. I love that we all get to celebrate doing this with you for another year—Happy Birthday @ashleyoldham

More faithful to my writing than my fitness but I’ve enjoyed sifting through the vibrant memories of my time in the woods as a kid. Pieces of a memoir slowly coming together. Here’s a small piece: Those river deltas and spillways were my childhood. Those trails worn through the mulched floor were my sidewalks. I navigated and charted my days by the angle of light like a land mariner with a sextant. Those days stretched out forever in my mind, fostering an affection for the wild that never abated. There was a kindness beneath the canopy and I never felt any fear tracing my way in the deep woods along its streams and rivers. I learned to love the sounds of the woods. The rain and its music. What we often call silence is just the hush of our machinery, a jarring halt of combustion and hurry; my ears attuned to the quiet small life around me. I loved the trees for their shade and their patience. I imagined being raised by the woods and felt a symbiotic fondness, a reciprocation of contentment. I would stumble upon old building foundations and wells and rusted husks of farm equipment now trapped between oaks. Ancient stone walls marked forgotten property lines that the natural world disregarded then reclaimed with lichen and moss. I would even dream of the woods so vividly that in the mornings I would walk outside to be sure there was no waterfall where I had imagined one, a little disappointed that the giant forking rivers I saw in my mind were just a conjuring. All my language and spirituality and emotion grew from the forest like saplings until my life was a manifestation of the natural world: the spirit a river, the mind a taproot, the body an ironwood.

The good things don’t seem to talk about today. They flit and dodge the heavy clouds and when it starts to rain I have this habit of just getting wet. My hope curls into a damp sponge. I hear war cries like “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” And I exhale the last of my goodwill at 6am. What then? Beauty calls upon honor. Peace calls upon reason. Hope calls upon faith. Love calls upon strength. These are the good and furious faces of our virtue. “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls…at night his song is with me—a prayer…”

I am waiting for it to be easy to go outside again. Which is mostly sad for my dog and the guy I pay to tell me I’m not moving enough. Winter has outstayed its welcome and I’m tired of being socked in by sharp air and long nights and shitty news. We look like we live in a ski out condo because we are always bundled in layers of hoodies and socks since the cost of heat and electricity is too much right now. We aren’t wearing boots inside though, I am not a monster. How many weeks away is spring? I know we’re getting there but waking up at 5am has me staring into what I can only assume is an eternal void. But, let me tell you, the sun does keep coming up despite my skepticism, thankfully. And soon it will come earlier. And soon we will be in mud and stick season but then, THEN, I will be able to turn my nose up to the day star without being sliced by the air. There are already spring birds nearby, let’s hope they stay because theirs is the only news I want to hear.

It is strange to feel powerless after a lifetime of being told anything is possible. I don’t know who started that idea but it lost is glimmer in the early morning stampede. I don’t blame those parents or teachers for trying to pass off their own disbelief as enthusiasm. I’m just not sure what they thought would happen when we finally stepped into the petty urgency of adulthood. It is also a strange sensation to feel the shudder of another Monday when the world is kicked around by people with a few too many yachts and houses. That my horizon hangs on their ambition like a pair of dice dangling from their rear view mirror—is stark. I do not care much for that narrative. I fumble awkwardly with my hands, which feel clumsy and small and insufficient. What can I do after all? If I believe in anything, it feels like resignation, it feels foolish and silly and regressive. Belief feels like a crutch, like when people say “it’s god’s will” or “god has a plan” which will always be, to me, the greatest evasion of responsibility of all time. Life has to be more than the vague contours of divine whim, or the game of billionaires. It takes some effort to not also feel small in my heart. I think that’s where all the hate came from. People got tired then they got cold. And hate felt like maybe they had some control so they used it until it consumed them and dripped down the family tree saturating the ground like a wicked bleeding sap. So I suppose today is about not shrinking into that shriveled husk of animosity that we cling to when we feel powerless. And quitting this motivational poster of believing anything is possible is fine as long as we still believe some things are possible. We don’t need everything—just a few of the best things that have always been within reach if we can hold on a bit longer. #amwriting #writingcommunity #writersofinstagram