The South Archives - Michelle Richmond

In Search of the Ultimate Winter (Wall Street Journal Traveler’s Tale)

I GREW UP in the humid heat of Alabama’s Gulf Coast. My family would run the air conditioner on Christmas Day so we could use the fireplace. In a landscape devoid of snow, where all you needed to get through the coldest months of the year was a windbreaker, winter took on a magical mythology. I dreamed of sleds and bright woolen mittens, a fat snowman guarding the lawn.

When I was 7, on a family trip to Gatlinburg, Tenn., I saw snow for the first time. What startled me most was the clean, bright smell and the crunching sound beneath my sneakers when I plunged my feet into a snow bank. The cold felt like a great adventure.

In 1997, I moved to New York City. The first snow of the winter filled me with awe. I loved the hush it brought to the noisy city, the way it made everything look sparkling and pristine. But when the snow turned black and piled up along the curbs and the wind bit my face, the romance soured. While I enjoy the cold, I decided I like it best in small doses. So I moved to San Francisco, where the summers are notoriously cold and winter brings occasional sun and frequent rain, never snow.

Continue reading this essay in the Wall Street Journal.

image by Anna Parini for the Wall Street Journal

Short Stories for Kindle

The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction, is now available for Kindle. Sample or purchase the book here.

The stories in Michelle Richmond’s first collection spin artfully off the life of a single character…smart and adept…” The New York Times

“This collection of brief sketches alternating with longer fictions has a novel’s heft, as characters who are just names in one story emerge to take center stage in another. These women’s lives are shaped by fate and by place, forces hauntingly evoked by this talented young writer.” ~The Boston Globe

“Richmond’s writing is perceptive and heartfelt, her subjects at once edgy and familiar. This is a winning debut.” Publishers Weekly

Ode to an Island

It’s called “Petit Bois,” which means “little woods,” and it’s located off the coast of Southeastern Mississippi. As a child in Alabama, I knew it as “Petty Boy.” We used to put our small family boat in the water at Pascagoula and make the short trip out. I remember the sun’s good heat on my arms, the saltwater spray in my face, and the strange feeling of floating momentarily in space each time the bow of the boat lifted off the water.

We’d drop anchor a few hundred feet from shore and swim to the gorgeous beach. The most amazing thing about Petit Bois was that it was almost always deserted. And the sand was always white and unbroken. Every time we went, it felt like landing in some new country. My sisters and I used to love running along the beach, making footprints in the blank canvas of sand. On a tiny grill, we’d cook fish that my dad had caught. By the time we swam back to the boat in the early evening, we’d be so exhausted we could barely keep our eyes open. Back on the boat, we donned life jackets and sat close together, entering some strange dream state, half-awake, half sleeping, while the boat rocked over the waves.

According to Wikipedia, Petit Bois received its name from French explorers “due to a small wooded section located on the eastern end of this mostly sand and scrub-covered island.” I remember, strangely, there being fields of flowers there. I haven’t been back in almost thirty years, but apparently, the trees were wiped out during Katrina.

An island, of course, is a thing of change. Its contours shift, its dimensions shrink or multiply. Sometimes it disappears altogether. It is constantly subjected to the whims of its surrounding waters, which are constantly subjected to the whims of human intervention. Some of these interventions are on a relatively small scale–a family boat skimming over the water, making waves. Others are more noticeable, and more permanent. A fisherman who has been helping with the cleanup recently told me that Petit Bois is completely covered in oil.