Pandemic Life

Singapore’s unwelcome parting gift

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Note: I’ve been back in Colorado for the past month, but still have a lot of stories to share with you from Vietnam. I first wrote this post in April and debated whether to publish it. People – especially in the US – get really sensitive when you remind them about the pandemic – or about masking. I wrote this mostly to process my own emotions around getting COVID for the first time (hopefully the only time, but I really doubt it). So, this post sat in a folder, neglected until this week, when, once again here in the US, I had a bunch of reminders that COVID is still floating around and impacting people’s lives every day.

Singapore sent me off with an unwelcome parting gift. When you have successfully avoided the plague for three years (especially while living in the US), you start to get a little cocky. You see advertisements for studies of ‘people who have never tested positive for COVID-19’ and you think: Yes, that’s me! I’ve never tested positive!

If you really want to avoid COVID, N95s work really well! This one from 3M is comfortable enough to wear on an 11 hour flight.

But when you wear a mask in public, avoid crowds and indoor gatherings, generally do your shopping online, and find yourself checking for hand sanitizer and a mask in your bag as religiously as you check for your phone and your keys, it IS possible to avoid the virus. N95 masks are spectacular protection, based on my experience on several trans-oceanic flights where I’m now sure there is always someone who is COVID positive on board.

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World on Fire

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I haven’t yet written about the day last year when the sky turned black at midday. It was so dark that my garden lights came on in the dim, orange twilight. But it’s August and we’re in fire season again. I find myself thinking about that day again because I’m cooped up at home with the windows closed as another smoke plume moves over Northern Colorado. Last year, we inhaled smoke and ash from late last summer to several weeks into autumn. The fires kept our skies grey for the better part of two months. But I distinctly remember that day just before Labor Day in early September when I braved the smoky air and temperatures over 90F to harvest my garden in preparation for an unseasonably early snow storm.

September 2020 in Greeley, CO – The day that turned black.
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Zion: on the cusp of transitions

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We’re deep into summer and the winter wonderland photos below might be a bit jarring for those living in the Northern Hemisphere. But this post about a trip to Zion National Park is ready to go out into the world. It’s long overdue. Travel is often my inspiration for blog posts. This past year led me to a lot of closer-to-home discoveries in the natural world – but, also, the lack of motivation to write, as we have all struggled to sort out life in a new version of this dystopian world. But here it is: my first visit to Zion.

I love that my first memories of Zion National Park will always be shrouded in an icy haze. Arriving in a new place after dark – whether it’s a rainforest, a bustling South American city, or a natural cathedral carved through the desert over millions of years – always leaves me disoriented. And then it snowed through the night, covering roads and painting still-bare trees in white. The world felt pillow-soft as I stepped out of my cabin. I walked across the grounds of the lodge, and the fog shifted to give me my first glimpse of a canyon wall. I had no idea how far these walls rose up, but I could feel the ones I couldn’t see – in the stillness, and in that sense of being enclosed and protected.

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America, the unfinished

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The last time I flew anywhere was back in November 2019 for a 3-day trip to Washington, D.C.

On my second evening there, after a long day in a working meeting, I arranged to meet a friend at the National Art Gallery on the Capitol Mall. My hotel was roughly within walking distance, but I decided to shave off some time by taking the Metro to the Mall, then walking to the gallery from there.

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What I really want for my birthday

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So, it’s been a rough week. A rough year. Sitting down to write feels like wading through molasses. There is always so much to sift through, that I don’t know whether to voice outrage, frustration, hopes or insights. Do I respond to protests and incomprehensible tweets by world leaders? Or do I let our current global challenges slide to the side and reminisce about the days when we could move around freely? Do I write about my greatest fears for our world or my tentative hope?

Truthfully, I spend a lot of my creative energy these days just trying to do my job – trying to create engaging, meaningful college courses that I teach through a screen – all about weather and climate. This takes place a 5-second walk from where I sleep, and eat, and shower, and think, and live my life. But because of what I teach, what I do each day feels much more meaningful now than ever, even those moments when we delve into the gory mathematical details of directional derivatives and radiative transfer.

But I’m reaching out today because I have a big milestone birthday coming up: the HALF CENTURY MARK. This is a big one right? It’s a big one, but there will be no party, no fancy dinner out, no room full of black balloons and people dancing to greatest hits from the ’80’s. (Don’t buy balloons, anyway. They’re bad for the environment. Not to mention that anything from the 80’s is probably bad for the environment – maybe even the music.)

But there is something that would make this birthday hugely meaningful and special, and I could use your help.

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Ten New Realities

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It’s been more than 100 days since coronavirus came to town. One hundred and six days, exactly, since Friday, March 13th, when I last stood before a classroom full of students. I remember the buzz in the air – the fear, the disbelief, the concern, the uncertainty. We thought we were going to be having classes online for only a couple of weeks. I remember washing my hands until my skin was dry and chapped that day, because, back then, we thought that contact was the primary mode of transmission.

I would have been a lot more freaked out if I knew it could float through the air on someone’s exhale – someone who didn’t appear infected.

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