Emily Articulated: Eight years here

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

Someone recently asked how long I’ve been writing for the Reader. I started to answer with something vague like, “quite a while,” but then I put a number to it — coming up on eight years. 

The number felt elastic coming out of my mouth, like when you think, “It can’t already be Christmastime!” until you replay the past 12 months and realize, “Of course it’s already Christmastime.” I imagine parents feel the same when telling someone their child’s age — tinged with disbelief, but also with a clear record of milestones that prove it to be true.

I moved to Sandpoint in the middle of a snowstorm in February 2017. I was 25, behind the wheel of a well-worn Subaru Outback packed to the roof. The Subaru lasted long enough to deposit me safely across the country, but wouldn’t make it the rest of that year — the engine meeting its end on the side of I-90, just east of Seattle. 

Traffic roared past as I FaceTimed my sister, her face fractured in the cracks of my phone’s screen as she boarded the plane at which I’d just dropped her off. We laughed through my tears. 

“Can you believe this?” I asked, which really meant, “What am I going to do?” 

The tow truck arrived 30 minutes later.

It felt like the kind of bad day that might be really funny someday — but I couldn’t yet see when that day would be. At the time, the Subaru’s death felt like a crisis: my bank account was nearly empty, my housing and work situation hinged on having a car, and my bike was also somehow unreliable (future cut to me, walking it home in the rain after a bartending shift).

But through the lens of time and perspective, I think of it as an unexpected turning point — the first of many lessons about what it means to truly live in a place. My landlord drove six hours each way to pick me up from the auto shop that declared the car “totaled.” A near-stranger lent me a spare vehicle for a month while I figured out my next moves. And a car-savvy bar patron-turned-friend accompanied me through the smoke-and-mirrors act of used-car shopping.

I began to shed the idea that life was something to be overcome — especially alone. The independence I’d worn like a badge turned out to be closer to armor, and I was learning that self-sufficiency works best when paired with the willingness to accept help.

Over the following eight years, Sandpoint would remind me of this again and again — the quiet and generous ways a community shows up for its people. And I began to understand that, for me, sharing the rawest parts of myself might just be a way to help them heal.

By opening myself up, my life here expanded in return. I built friendships that felt like family, made a home, started a business, met my life partner (and with him, been welcomed into the most loving, generous family). I experienced some of my greatest joys and deepest losses, and was cared for in ways I never expected.

At the same time, the wider world was shifting beneath my feet, in both small and seismic ways. Fields were paved, streets rerouted and buildings popped up in tandem with the town’s population. Wars raged overseas, protests rose and fell in city streets, administrations changed hands and national policies redrew the backdrop of daily life.

All of it, personal and universal, wove itself into my writing, shaping the questions I asked, the moments I noticed and the lens through which I tried to understand my small corner of the world. Writing became a way to make sense of change, both near and far, and to reflect on what it means to belong. 

Not every piece was my best work (looking at you, COVID years), but some of them were.

And in the act of writing — the gift of being asked to speak — I’ve discovered my voice. Even more special has been the community on the other side: reading, responding, challenging and sharing, reminding me I’m not in this alone. 

So, thank you for the eight years, for the kindness and for reading.

Here’s to the next chapter, to more words, more connection and more finding our way together through it all.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.