Cabins, Crickets, and Cyberpunk
Notes from a disconnected cabin vacation — birdwatching, woodland neighbors, and a spectacular introduction to William Gibson’s Neuromancer.
My wife and I are on vacation in upstate New York at one of the East Wind hotel locations. We’ve been to their Lake Placid spot before — still my favorite so far — but there’s a peaceful charm here in having nothing but WiFi. Sure, we’ll watch some YouTube or stream a show, but mostly we kick back and enjoy the quiet and the sounds of nature.
Right now Flora and I are on the front porch of our cabin, at the base of a hill. The view isn’t spectacular, but you can hear the crickets. I love when the wind kicks up and you can hear it streaming through the leaves and branches — like the trees are letting out a long, creaking sigh.
We’ve got a neighbor who’s either a woodchuck or an muskrat — clearly I need to brush up on the difference — but you can watch the little guy, about the size of a cat, lazily trudging around.
And then there are the birds. So many birds. Flora got into birdwatching over the last year, and it’s honestly pretty cool watching her figure out what species she’s looking at, especially now that there are apps to help identify them by sight and sound. Watching her use one, it hit me: birdwatching was the original Pokémon. 😂
On my end, I’ve been watching The Expanse, working through Mothership’s core rulebook and its new bounty-hunting expansion Wages of Sin, and listening to the audiobook of Neuromancer.
I’ve meant to read Neuromancer for years, and I’ll almost certainly do a full writeup once I finish. But even an hour in, it’s spectacular. Written by William Gibson in 1984, it’s THE cyberpunk story — it coined so much of the genre’s vocabulary, including Night City and even “the matrix” itself.
What immediately hooked me is Gibson’s prose. The way he describes the world — even the most mundane details — gives everything a depth and texture that few authors manage. Most writers pull you in through character; Gibson pulls you in through description, and somehow still ties it back into the fabric of the characters themselves. I like his characters too, don’t get me wrong — but it’s rare to find a story that draws you in through the writing itself.
Neuromancer is nothing short of fantastic. Full thoughts once I finish the novel.
Closing out — I love our cabin vacations. I like the beach too, but there’s something about being out in nature, disconnected from the digital noise of the world, that feels like a massage for the core of my being. When we first arrived, I remember feeling the tension stream out of my body.
I hope you find something that lets you disconnect the same way.
Anyhoo, that’s it for now.
Stay frosty.
