Rock Salt Journal

Editor's Note

An ice storm in March. Chandelier trees, glittering and clinking, broken branches crushed bushes, dangling power lines. I witnessed the aftermath but didn’t notice the storm. I knew it was sleeting outside, wet and horrible, but my thoughts were inside. I sat on the floor of my brother’s house drinking a canned cocktail. The house was full, my friends, some local, some visiting, my brother, his wife, their baby, my partner. We drank and distracted each other from six to ten. Finally, my brother deemed it bedtime.

Emerging from the house, I encountered the ice. The stairs were round with crystal, the branches moved too slowly in the wind. Heavy and fragile. In the car, we came upon a downed trunk that covered most of the asphalt. The upper stems scraped the side of the vehicle as we passed. Thousands of strings of rock candy, bumping and breaking against us.

I remember another ice storm. December 2008. My eleventh birthday. I woke, and the house was silent. The power was out. We sat in front of the woodstove, an iron leviathan, breath as loud as a coal engine. I sweated and waited for breakfast.

We walked the icy roads of rural New Hampshire, ducking twisted powerlines, hopping past falling branches. They shattered against the road. The winter sun was white and everywhere. Like a house of mirrors, it splintered through the forest, directionless, brighter than burning argon. I bumped a cluster of pine needle windchimes with my mitten.

Writing about New England makes me sentimental. It’s the setting of my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, different at times, but always repeating itself. Every new thing that happens to me here feels like it’s happened before. Other people’s memories feel like they’re mine. Other people’s stories. Nonfiction and fiction alike. It’s the deciding factor: Do I remember this?

Thanks for coming back. I hope you remember the following.

— J.B. Marlow, Editor