January 23 26 Newsletter |Take the Back Roads

 This newsletter was originally sent on October 25, 2025

Each month, I share new essays, books, and stories from the road.

📬 Want these updates in your inbox? Subscribe here.

Winter Storm Fern &  The Art of Weathering Dear friends, As this note reaches you, Winter Storm Fern is moving through, bringing ice, snow, and the sort of power-outage mayhem that turns ordinary days into small logistical adventures. We’re as ready as one reasonably can be: a tent if things get dramatic, a camp stove, mobster mug-shot playing cards for morale, and more fajita fixings than strictly necessary. There’s mead. There are cinnamon rolls. There is Diet Pepsi. In short, we should be able to weather it just fine. Storms have a way of narrowing the world. When the weather closes in, life becomes very simple very quickly: warmth, light, food, rest. There’s something quietly instructive about that, especially when your body has been asking for the same kind of attention. This week’s blog post comes out of that place. I recently went to Hot Springs, not looking for a cure so much as a pause, a chance to step away from the noise and remember that healing is often less dramatic than we expect. It’s rarely a straight line. More often, it’s a series of small allowances: slowing down, listening more closely, letting the body be where it is. Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, “The great thing in sickness is not to be cured, but to live.” That line has stayed with me. Healing, I’m learning, is not always about fixing what’s broken. Sometimes it’s about learning how to live faithfully and attentively inside the limits we’ve been given. If you’re in the path of this storm, I hope you’re warm, well-stocked, and safe. If you’re somewhere calmer, hold a good thought for those riding it out. Wherever you are, may you find a little steadiness—inside and out. Grace and steady light, a.d. elliott Art and Other Odd Adventures