Six Month Pandemic Interlude
It has been exactly six months since David and I retreated to the cabin. When we left:
- koalas were just emerging from the devastated ashes of the Australian outback, their arms extended to anyone who might help them.
- Fracas, dog of my heart, who was still adjusting to the loss of his left eye, had become slow and uncertain, his joy no longer the palpable force it had been for the previous thirteen years
- one of my dearest friends, Susan, was moving from the hospital back into the home she loved and shared with her husband.
In the time we’ve been here, we:
- spent weeks clearing a glacier of snow from our deck
- watched Spring slowly drag itself out of the dregs of Winter Receding
- bid a heart-broken long-distant farewell to Susan, without ever being able to visit her or give her the hug I felt was tearing me apart with the ferocity of my desire to embrace my beautiful friend again
- witnessed Frac’s resurrection, as the time here in the wilds restored some of his mobility and much of his joy
- revelled in being in this wild place, whether it was walking, kayaking, swimming, or watching hummingbirds from the gazebo
- wrote a book during a three-month period that passed as if in a fever dream, the characters seeming to come to me fully-realized, the story unfolding through me as if I were more medium than writer
- Fracas died, remarkably close to the time that the book in which he’s featured was completed. And we experienced an outpouring of support from friends and family that I will always treasure
- black men died at the hands of police in American cities, and those cities erupted in a conflagration of conflict
- the forests of the west coast of the US exploded into apocalyptic firestorms
- nearly 200,000 Americans died of the corona virus, many of whom could have been saved by the truth.
And throughout, the orange ogre has danced on the parapets of Washington, gleefully pissing on the embers of truth, and then dancing the ashes into a toxic porridge he force-feeds to those gullible enough to hold their mouths open, like hungry babies.
And you? How have your last six months been?
