I am slowly working through my stash of untasted minis, a thing that will take me a lot longer than I always imagine when I buy them. If the apocalypse ever happens and you’re in need of tea, please feel free to come and loot my house. If I’m still alive and here, I’ll give you a big bag and send you on your way. If I’m not here…help yourself. With my permission.

 

This tea is a raw pu-erh, which is one of my favorite kinds of teas. I got it in 2022 and it’s been sitting in my humidity-controlled tea case ever since then, which means it’s had about a a two and a half years to age. I don’t know what it was like at the time of purchase, but right now, it’s wonderful. 

 

One of the reasons I most love a raw pu-erh is that it changes so much from steep to steep. Scientifically, I know it’s because different chemicals take longer to steep. But it still feels a little bit like magic to have so many separate teas in one pot.

 

The first steep—I used ten seconds for this—was sweet and just a little floral, with a lot of delicate complexity. I drank through the pitcher, and frowned, because the tea didn’t seem to match the name: it was all sunny field, and absolutely no danger.

 

Around the second steep, though, you could taste it. The deeper flavors started steeping into the tea, chewy and intensifying the sweetness into something with a little more body, like a sunset creeping over the field. The tea soup gradually shifted from springtime gold to a darker honey, and that intense flavor grew and grew.

You can get a full cake of Dangerfield from white2tea if you’re feeling brave, or you can buy a single-serving mini like I did.

I grew up in Southern California, so I’ve spent the last few days watching fires roar out of control in gusting winds, not sure what to say except to express enormous sadness for everyone whose home and health is at risk. I’ve seen familiar settings shadowed by smoke and fire. I exhaled when my high school friends who lived in the evacuation areas reported that they had successfully made their way to safety. I’m still waiting for my cousin to update her status on Facebook; this is pretty much the only time I will log in to my personal account.

 

This has been a strange, transitional week. Not only has it been the start of a new year, but the US has been gearing up for a new president—one who apparently wants to start at least three (probably more?) separate wars and/or economic actions, none of which make any sense. I feel off balance: there’s too much going on, and it feels like there is no way to respond to any of the seventeen pending disasters. 

 

Last night, I felt incredibly overwhelmed by the world. (It didn’t help that our water heater, which we literally had replaced last year, decided to stop working yesterday afternoon.) By the time my husband got home from work, I was frazzled and felt like I couldn’t do anything at all. He reminded me that I always feel better if I take time to work out, and so I did that, and then I took a breath, and then I had some tea.

 

This, I think, is what tea is for me: it is a time to take a step back and think, instead of to feel blown every which way. It gives me time to ask myself not just what needs to be done in the world (an unending and impossible clamor that tends to overload me with a sense of helplessness), but to ask myself what I will do tomorrow.

 

Here is the list I made for myself last night:

I have now done all three of those things. The world has not become more manageable, but I have chosen the things that I can manage.

 

I’m thinking of everyone in harms’ way at the moment, and hoping that you and your families will be safe and sound, and that the fires will swiftly get under control.

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