Coronavirus Stories

          I have been moved to tears by the ways people are helping each other during these difficult days. Players in the Rotterdam Philharmonic, for instance, put a video on youtube (google it) of each of them, unable to leave the house, playing with earphones so that they were all playing together. Of all wonderful selections, they played Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

          Our joy will not be forgotten.

          In cities all over Europe people have come out on balconies and opened windows at 8:00 in the evening to applaud and appreciate their medical workers. Seeing this phenomenon online, hearing the tumult of applause, will bring tears to your eyes, too.

          Our gratitude will not be forgotten, either.

          The NPR program 1A closes each segment with a call from someone around the country with an uplifting story. A few days ago it was about a postman in a small town who gave $1200 to each employee of a beloved local restaurant. Many of my friends who don't normally use take-out are using it now just to keep their favorite restaurants in business.

          Our generosity will pull us through.

      I am donating back to the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic the cost of my now useless tickets, since I won't be going to New York next month, after all, and the performances have been canceled, anyway. Same with my tickets to plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that have had to be canceled. My priority is that our cultural institutions, large and small, like our restaurants and coffee shops, will still be here when we emerge from our houses.

          The most important thing I can do is to stay home, so I do, as much as possible. My husband's medical condition requires frequent trips to the hospital, but I stay in the car and knit while I wait for him.

          Trailkeepers of Oregon has asked that we not go on hikes, not because we can't keep social distance on a trail (though on steep mountain trails, that, too, becomes problematic) but so we don't take risks of twisting an ankle or getting lost or anything else that might use medical resources.

          So even though there's fresh snow in the mountains, I won't be cross-country skiing this weekend. The risk is too great. I'm not a flamboyant skier, but a friend's recent experience has made me think twice about my own behavior. A very good mountain biker and a normally cautious person, and super aware of not taking unnecessary chances during these times, he thought he could safely go for a short and careful ride, but when he got to the trailhead, he found the parking lot full. "People, this is not cool!" he thought, angrily. He decided to take a short, seldom used route before going home and was riding along, slow enough but emotionally distracted, when he crashed, tumbling down the mountain, his bicycle falling on top of him. Fortunately, he didn't have to call on medical facilities, but, see? We think we are safe; we undermine ourselves.

          I can see the distraction affecting me, too. For instance, my usual practice, when I'm ready to take a shower (I have an outdoor shower), is to hang my nightgown on the inside bathroom door and my towel on the door to the outside. After my shower this morning when I reached for my towel, I found that I had hung the nightgown where the towel should be and vice versa. Such unconscious action is a clue to distracted behavior.

          So I stay home, reading, writing, cooking, sewing, knitting, gardening, walking in my own hills. I've joined my yoga instructor's online class. And I stay buoyed by words of friends and family and by the examples that come through the internet of ways people are facing this crisis. Here is one such example, a poem by Donna Ashworth. May it give you the wings of hope we all need these days.

History Will Remember

History will remember when the world stopped

And flights stayed on the ground

And the cars parked in the street

And the trains didn't run.

History will remember when the schools closed

And the children stayed indoors

And the medical staff walked towards the fire

And they didn't run.

History will remember when when the people sang

On their balconies, in isolation

But so very much together

In courage and song.

History will remember when the people fought

For their old and their weak

Protected the vulnerable

By doing nothing at all.

History will remember when the virus left

And the houses opened

And the people came out

And hugged and kissed

And started again

Kinder then before.

On the Mountain during the Coronavirus

          Day is just dawning. A crescent moon has slipped over the mountain, shiny white in a pale blue sky just beginning to throw off the night. When I stepped outside for a piece of firewood from the front porch, I heard the twitter of spring birds. The songbirds haven't arrived yet, but the early twitterers lift my heart. Humpy Mountain, west-facing, is still dark. Left-over snow patches its facade here and there. The sky glows softly behind the mountain.

          Nothing in nature cares that the human world is in the clutches of a cruel virus. (What nature does care about is climate change, but that's another story.) Everything up here on the mountain is as usual. Even that I am here alone is not unusual. I am reminded of the days I lived in my little house, here on the mountain, for so many years without electricity. When a storm hurled its power over my house, I was fine. With my kerosene lamps and wood-burning stove, I never knew when there was a blackout down the road. Life was as usual up here on the mountain.

          The difference now is that I do know that the coronavirus is playing havoc with people's lives down in the valley and collectively with societies all over the world. Like everyone else, I have been affected, not directly by the disease but by its effects. Mike and I had to cancel a planned trip to New Orleans for a stove convention for him, which he was sorry to miss, and, for me, a chance to see what New Orleans is all about. We will cancel our late-April trip to New York, too, since even if we ourselves felt safe, what would we do there, with restaurants closed and events canceled? The New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the off-Broadway play—tickets bought and money down the drain. And I was so looking forward to being in New York City.

          In the face of things, it's not a big deal.

          One person says, "Why are we bothering with all these cautions? We're all going to get coronavirus, anyway." Another person buys fourteen loaves of bread and packages of meat that will last a year. 

          I am at neither extreme, taking precautions without panicking. I wash my hands. I have adequate supplies. I have no need to go into town or take public transportation or be in crowds, which, I understand, don't exist anyway.

          I held a teleconference for the board meeting I chaired yesterday. I talk twice a day with Mike, who is stuck at his house in town (for other reasons, but that, too, is another story). I have my usual work and activities here at my house. I walk up and down the mountain every day. I watch the grouse flowers come into bloom, listen for the birds, take solace and inspiration from the mountain. My family is safe. There is a lot to be grateful for.

Pushing the Ski-now Button

          The new-fallen snow was already six inches deep by the time the fourteen members of the Grants Pass Nordic Ski Club who had come to Lake of the Woods Resort for a weekend of skiing were strapping boots into skis and adjusting hats and gloves at the Pederson trailhead. After pizza the night before, we had walked from the restaurant into rain, which, overnight, turned into this beautiful new snow that had been pushing my ski-now button ever since I had waked up and looked out the window of my charming cabin.

My charming cabin

          Now I was waiting impatiently at the edge of a smooth white meadow. When Stacy took off in the lead, I pulled in behind her, too eager to wait longer, willing to yield as faster skiers caught up.

          Snow was falling lightly through the trees, padding thickly the ends of evergreen branches and turning inner limbs to lace.

Jan and Wendy just coming into view

When Stacy and I stopped to wait for the others, silence enfolded us. After a short time two skiers appeared, Jan, who had taken a moment to ski some small hills, and Wendy, who had been skiing with a maimed ski. Now that she had stopped, she pulled off the broken metal edge that had been dragging in the snow. No one else appeared behind us, so, after a reasonable wait, the four of us took off again.

          The whole group regathered where the trail met a road, untrammeled and white with new snow. We ate our lunches standing on skis.

Diana, Joan, Wendy, Stacy, Anne

After lunch, Joan, Dani, Anne, Ron, Paula, Tom, and Kathy took the road to return to the cars, while Stacy, Jan, Wendy, Magdi, and I skied farther up the hill before turning around for a superb float-on-skis trip back down to the lunch spot. There Stacy, Jan, and I turned into the woods to take the trail back to the trailhead, while Wendy and Magdi skied the road.

          First Stacy, then Jan, then I swept through the woods, separated by distance and a big silence. When Stacy and Jan stopped to let me catch up, we stood for a few minutes under the big trees with their snow-drooping limbs and dark trunks, listening to the whistling calls of small birds in the tree tops. Their tiny, occasional whistles pierced the silence like shooting stars in a dark sky blinking suddenly and going out.

          That night we crowded into Ron and Paula's cabin for Mexican-style hors d'oeuvres, then bundled up and walked to Joan and Dani's for burritos. The food was good and plentiful, amplified by margaritas and wine. We ate and drank and laughed and told stories. I read a piece I had written about cross-country skiing in the full moon years ago on the back side of Mt. Ashland because, before dessert at my cabin, we would also be doing a moonlight ski.

          Eight of us skied that night, under a nearly full moon, its light diffused by clouds. The moon turned everything into either white snow or black other. The forest was but charcoal strokes on white paper. We ourselves were black silhouettes. Dani's ski clothes are black anyway, but Anne's turquoise jacket, Stacy's red one, Jan's blue one, Magdi's and Joan's purple coats, even Wendy's bright red one turned black by the moon. I, in my white jacket, looked like the albino pigeon I saw a few weeks ago in a flock of dark gray pigeons. The moon occasionally broke through the clouds rewarding us with electric-bright light and sharp, deep shadows. Skiing in the moonlight, we sang moon songs: "Moonshadow," "Blue Moon," "Moon River." We skied till my feet were aching and I called for a return to the cars.

          The after-dark non skiers had, quite sensibly, not waited for us for dessert, so we took the remainder of the raspberry marzipan cake (Magdi's dinner contribution) to my cabin and had it and my marshmallow fudge brownies for our apres-ski treats,

Marshmallow fudge brownies

along with some port Magdi supplied. When my guests left, I filled the spa bathtub with hot water and a good dose of Epsom salts and sank into it.

          The next morning more new snow promised another superb day of skiing. Joan, Dani, Stefanie, Wendy, and Jan skied the moonlit route in daylight for nine and a quarter miles. I hated missing it, but my feet refused to go, so I put my skis in my car, scraped snow off its windows, and set out for home.

          If it was the last ski of the season, it was a good one. I could put away my skis well satisfied. In spite of too-warm weather and too little precipitation, the skiing has been great all season. Who knows? Maybe there is another good snowfall ahead of me yet to give my ski-now button one more good push.

A Galaxy of Stars for the Siskiyou Crest

          For the past few days I was cross-country skiing in the Elkhorn Range of the Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon, but I came home a day early, partly because I had skied all the trails at the Anthony Lakes Nordic Ski center and partly because Mike wasn't feeling well and couldn't ski. So, with a free day in front of me, I decided to hike up Charlie Buck trail in the Applegate today.

          It was a beautiful day for hiking. The sky was blue with lofty clouds. A wind kept me cool though I was sweating with the exertion of hiking that steep trail, and, when I got to the top of the trail, the Siskiyou Crest opened before me with its snowy peaks marching across the skyline. I couldn't get enough of staring at all that mass of mountainous beauty or walking in such spring wonders.

          At the top of the trail, just as I started across the broad open hillside to Baldy Peak, I met a man walking towards me. We chatted a bit, in friendly hiker fashion. He was Asian and lived in Washington, across the river from Portland. He was on his way to hike in Redwoods National Park and had stopped overnight in the Applegate to hike the Charlie Buck trail, which he had found on alltrails.com. He said it had been given a five-star rating, but he was disappointed because he didn't think it was a five-star trail.

          Not a five-star trail?! I spread my arms in an expansive gesture towards the snowy peaks of the Siskiyou Crest overtopping the steep green hills of our trail. "You don't think this is worth five stars?" I asked, incredulous

          He shrugged. "I would give it three stars," he said, "maybe four."

          I was so insulted! Three stars?! Four, maybe? For all of this?

          Then he went on his way, disappointed, and I went on mine, still enthralled by the beauty of the mountains all around me, the gorgeous spring weather, and the joy of walking, climbing, striding, exerting my body in nature. Later I watched two eagles circling and soaring over the canyons beneath me, their white heads and tails and black wings swooping against the sky. Only three stars? Only four?

         I had my five-star day. I'm sorry his didn't top a four.

         I didn't look up ratings for skiing at Anthony Lakes before I went there. I don't know what they might be on various websites, but for me, the skiing was perfect. It snowed the second night I was there, and that morning the sky cleared, creating perfect conditions: a couple of inches of fresh snow and a fiery blue sky behind the forest canopy. The needle-sharp peaks of the Blue Mountains, called Oregon's Alps, jabbed into the sky, glistening with their new snow.

There were no other skiers on the trails; I had the entire trail system to myself. I skied every trail at Anthony Lakes that day, some trails twice, always in that perfect solitude that amplified the beauty of the surroundings. The trails were groomed, so the skiing was free of dangers: no icy spots, no narrow passages, no trees to run into, the roads wide and smooth, the snow fresh, and I began to ski absolutely freely, climbing the hills, then free-falling on the descents, skiing fast, making graceful turns as I descended because everything in such conditions was graceful. The solitude in the forest and in the snow was magnificent. How many stars would I give those three hours of skiing? The entire Milky Way.

          And then someone would come along expecting something more from such a starry rating than, perhaps, he was getting, and instead of enjoying the experience would grumble that this wasn't worth such exuberant ratings.

          Maybe Mr. Asian Man would have enjoyed his hike better if he had opened his eyes to what was there instead of thinking it should have been something else. My five stars might be your three, but I'll take my galaxies of good times without caring how you would rate them.