2021 Highlights
The shortest-longest year
Our ending to 2021 felt like the old trope where the anti-hero gets their wish, only to struggle against the unintended consequences it brings.
We’d been wishing for a white Christmas and headed up to our cabin in the Sierra Nevada for two weeks. The wish came true; though at first we bemoaned the somewhat underwhelming flurry which was not even enough to make a snowman.
Then the snow didn’t stop.
Several feet fell over the next few days, blocking roads and bringing down trees. We lost power, had a tree punch a hole through the roof above the girls’ bedroom, then waited 4 days for the plows to make the roads passable, and when we left today the cable internet was still offline.
We were well prepared though, and stayed comfortable with our propane heating, BBQ, and copious supply of wine and flash lights. We sledded, explored on foot, and made a snowman — plus a snowqueen, complete with ballgown.
Rewinding… our year started where it ended, in Arnold — “Heart of the Sierra” — only with much less snow. We had foregone our usual trip back to England for Christmas, due to COVID concerns and a lack of enthusiasm about traveling with a nine month old.
In January, Lyra started school at Red Bridge. A mixed age program focused on agency and autonomy in learning. It’s been amazing for her and I’ve enjoyed becoming part of the community.
I bike her to and from school everyday, joined by her sister in the morning on our cargo bike. The flexibility afforded by healthy remote work habits making this possible without posing a tax on my work or my team.
While we can technically work from anywhere, through the spring we spent weeks in the city for school, then escaped up to the mountains at weekends and during school closures. It was relieving to distance ourselves from the density of our SF apartment building, where masks and social distancing were sometimes tense topics.
Lyra had an outdoor party for her 6th birthday, with friends coming in shifts for one-on-one play. It actually worked out really nicely and is something we may continue post-pandemic — whenever that might be.
Skye turned one, but it wasn’t until late March that she met anyone in her extended family, when Nana and Grandad visited for the first time. (Tessa and I took the opportunity to get a few hours snowboarding.)
Grandma and Grandpa got their chance to meet Skye over Thanksgiving, when the English border finally opened up. They returned a few weeks later for Christmas dodging Omicron waves on both sides of the Atlantic. Uncle Jon sliding in a visit in between.
When not in the mountains we spent much more time on the Northern California beaches than we had done pre-pandemic; finding several new spots between Pescadero and Pacifica. While not always warm and rarely swimmable, they are beautiful and the kids always love playing in the sand — plus in COVID-times are a relatively safe place to hang out with friends.
My major non-work project for 2021 was building a playhouse. It all started in the dark autumn of 2020 when I stumbled across CedarWorks’ CAD tool. I started playing around for fun, but with playgrounds closed and the kids going stir crazy pulled the trigger one night on the couch.
It arrived months later, a little more DIY than I imagined, dozens of boxes piled on the sides of the road with relatively sparse instructions.
The sales person had said very little leveling would be needed for the ground, but in reality I ended off moving several tonnes of hard dirt over the course of several 5,000 calorie days. The build itself was spread over several months, with missing and warped parts needing to be delivered with long lead times due to COVID supply chain issues.
The final step was transferring 6 tonnes of pea gravel the 30-feet from the driveway to the playhouse. Tessa constructed a flume out of cardboard and we shoveled it over the course of 3 days.
It was a hard project, but fun and very rewarding.
Our only trip out of California in 2021 was during the week of 4th July.
We drove up the coast to the Oregon border, then up the I5 to Portland to see Evan and Meena, then on to Seattle to see Tessa’s family.
We were a little nervous about the 4 day drive with Skye, but armed with amazon’s best fidget toys we made the journey with relative ease. We arrived in the Pacific Northwest during a heat wave and Seattle was beautiful. We went swimming in the lake, walked in the woods, and spent hours bouncing on the cousins’ roof top trampoline.
(Perhaps the part of the trip Lyra will remember longest, is when she convinced me to let her play a magic-claw game while we waited to pick up food in Grant’s Pass. I figured it’d be a good lesson on gambling, but unfortunately she won two big stuffies in two tries. 🤦🏻)
For the last few years I’ve set myself the modest goal of 350 miles a year — just one mile a day! But have ended off foiled by sickness, injury, wild fires, and pandemics. This year I hit my goal well ahead of schedule, ending the year at 460 miles. Still not a massive number for serious runners, but quite a step up from previous years.
Apart from luck, two things helped me hit the goal: First was setting an incremental weekly goal that would put me, on average, ahead of my annual goal. The second was doing one of Skye’s naps per week as a run. This forced me to run for longer than I had been, in order to keep her asleep.
Another somewhat light reading year. I found myself starting books on philosophy and history, only to get stuck. Much of my “reading” therefore ended off being done on Audible.
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus; Chatter by Ethan Kross; Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson; Nexus by Ramez Naam; The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman; The Witchwood Crown, Empire of Grass, and The Heart of What Was Lost by Tad Williams; The Stand by Steven King; Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher; How I Built This by Guy Raz; and The Sandman by Neil Gaiman.
So, another year over.
It was both the longest and shortest of years. In many ways the year started off with such hope and now it seems like everyone just feels exhausted.
Hopefully our healthy skepticism of 2022 will lead to opportunities to be surprised.
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise.
