Hunker Down

In an effort to get my writing juices flowing again, I have joined a Writing Through the Pandemic group sponsored by the Homer Library (Homer, Alaska). Here is my first submission...

Prompt
Make a list of 16 observations of life during the COVID-19 pandemic:
* 4 of them in your immediate living situation (your home, your food, your family dynamics, etc.)
* 4 of them beyond the borders of your home but still close (neighborhood, hiking trails nearby, grocery store, town)
* 4 of them far from home (outside news, family or friends you're in touch with, news from faraway places)
* 4 things about your life that are non-COVID related (life goes on, what are some of the circumstances of your life right now that would be true with or without the virus?)

Immediate Living Situation

1. In many ways, it feels like I’m back at our cabin on the Unalakleet River. It’s break-up and the river is unnavigable, so we are hunkered down for several weeks until we can move again. However, having just moved into our home in Sutton in December, we have a lot of projects to work on, inside and out, so it is nice to have the time, and the restrictions, to do so.
2. I haven’t been to a grocery store since March 13. Because I am one of those high risk people, my husband does all of the grocery shopping. I am a list maker, so I send him to the store with a detailed list every 10 days or so. However, he is an impulse buyer, so he always comes home with things not on the list. I joke that it’s like Chopped every night for dinner. Having lived offgrid for the last 3 years, I am used to having a stocked pantry, so this is not much of a change for us.
3. Gregg and I are used to being in close quarters together for extended periods of time, and I’m actually going to miss it when he starts work at Fish & Game on May 1. Our three dogs, garden, and greenhouse promise to keep me busy, though.
4. Since my job was mainly online before this all started (online UAF professor and holding a distance staff position as Writing Support Specialist for UAF-Bristol Bay Campus), not much has changed in that arena. However, most of my online students in the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands no longer have internet access with the school’s being closed. I have learned that Distance Learning is not synonymous with Online Learning, so I email hoards of files and self-made videos to central contacts in Unalaska and Togiak which they then download onto thumb drives. The drives are then taped on an outside office door for the students to pick up. They are returned the same way, and then my contacts email the completed assignments back to me. It really took a lot of out-of-the-box thinking to figure that all out!

Neighborhood

1. Moving to Sutton last December was a chance for me to have friends again, a chance to be a part of a community, something that I hadn’t really had for 6 years or so. This place is perfect for me in that the library is the heart of the community. The good news is that even though the building is closed, the library is alive and well. The exercise class that I attended there is now via audio conference. The book club, game nights, and stitching get-togethers have been cancelled for now, and that is difficult. However, last week, the library did start checking out books again! So, I can put books on hold online, call the library before I go there, and they put the books, with my name on them, on a table outside for me to pick up. I do miss chatting with the ladies who work there, though. That’s where I met everyone I know in town.
2. Sutton’s population is small, 1,600, but mighty. We have a local general store with an attached cafe. We can buy local, fresh eggs and order take-out. We love our neighbors so we order take-out every Friday as a show of support during this time. This week, we’ve already decided that it’s going to be pizza - fresh-made crust and fresh toppings with a slightly spicy red sauce and plenty of cheese! The best part is that it’s only half a mile from our house. Again, I always send Gregg there now, so I miss the lively conversation that a small general store produces.
3. Since we live in a place carved out of the wilderness and pressed tightly between the Matanuska River to the south and the Talkeetna Mountains to the north, the backcountry is only a mile away. I hopped on the 4-wheeler yesterday to go exploring. Just being able to feel the cool wind on my face and enjoy the beauty we live in freshened my spirit.
4. Our neighborhood is in hunker down mode. We see families riding around on 4-wheelers and dirt bikes, walking dogs, and pushing strollers. We all keep our distance and wave. I am cognizant of keeping my own dog, a chocolate lab named Nuka, close when we are out for a walk. She is used to going up to people and asking for a rub, but I understand that the virus is so contagious, that that is not optimal right now. Nuka doesn’t understand.

Far Away

1. Far away has a different connotation now than it did a couple of months ago. I used to have one daughter who lived far away, in Wisconsin, and one daughter who lived close, in Eagle River. Now, they are both far away. I’m thankful for FaceTime. Sarah, in Eagle River, FaceTimed me just yesterday to ask me about gardening, since she is getting ready to sow seeds. I wish I could be beside her with my hands in the dirt next to hers, but that’s not going to happen this year.
2. April, in Wisconsin, was supposed to come visit this summer with her husband and two-year old son, but of course that has been cancelled. I haven’t seen my grandson, Jack, in over a year and it may be another year before I get the chance again. I guess I should qualify that statement by saying that I haven’t seen Jack in person, because we do FaceTime and that makes my heart sing.
3. I also keep in touch with family and friends in the far-flung corners of the Lower 48 - Lori’s in Florida, Vicki’s in Texas, Robin’s in Louisiana, Holly, my sister, is in Washington state. All of them are in the high risk category and are often frustrated by the lack of consideration that the general populations are showing in their areas by not respecting social distancing and not wearing masks. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for their safety.
4. Then, there are those friends and family members who think this is overblown, a hoax, a conspiracy, or whatever. I wish I could just say, “You do you,” but I can’t. What they do affects those around them, whether it’s browsing through Walmart and then visiting older family members, spreading false news (who really knows what is fake anymore), rebuffing social distancing mandates, or refusing to wear masks. No matter what their political views, it’s still better to be selfless than careless.

Non-COVID

1. We brought home two Miniature American Eskimo puppies, a breeding pair, from Minnesota when we were there 6 weeks ago for Spring Break. They are smart and lively and we love them to pieces. I found them online and when we went to pick them up, we realized it was a puppy mill. They were scared to death and had no human socialization. We have loved them to pieces and they are cuddly little creatures now. I look forward to training them to do some fun tricks, because the breed has a history of being circus performers.
2. I have hundreds of seeds planted, waiting for the snow to melt so that they can settle into their new home in the fertile Matanuska River Valley. I love growing my own edible flowers from seeds and making flavorful and colorful jellies out of the petals, and I’m looking forward to a successful vegetable growing season after 3 failed attempts in Unalakleet!
3. Our “new” home is a 19-year-old, 1 bedroom, 1 bath (just a shower, no tub), 1,000 square foot, log cabin a stone’s throw from the river one way and a mountain range the other. It is beautiful. It is quaint. It is on a dirt road. It has modern appliances and a big kitchen. It is perfect for us.
4. Gregg and I just celebrated our 3rd Anniversary. We are happy. We are thankful.

Day 19

In the past 15 years, I’ve had pneumonia 7 times. Every year that I was teaching in a public school classroom, I came down with a respiratory infection that turned into bronchitis that turned into pneumonia. Every year. I was bracing myself for it this year, since I was back in the classroom, albeit a college classroom, when COVID-19 shut everything down.

The doctors say that my lungs are misshapen; my lungs and surrounding organs are pushed to one side, most likely because of scoliosis that went undetected until I was 29. Therefore, infections settle in my lungs very quickly. Because of this, I fall into the high-risk category for COVID-19.

That is one reason why I’m on Day 19 of extreme social distancing. The other reason is because of the carelessness of others. I wish I could care less about this virus, but I need to remain vigilant if I want to remain upright. Those who can care less, do. They meet up with friends for a quick visit. They take their entire family with them to go grocery shopping. They hug their grandchildren. They even go to packed church services. By doing those things, they are encouraging the spread of the virus. By doing those things, they are lengthening my isolation. By doing those things, they are encouraging others to do the same.

I send Gregg to the grocery store, have him wash his clothes and take a shower as soon as he gets home, and I only let him go during the senior shopping hours early in the morning when the carts have been freshly sanitized and the store isn’t open to the general public, those who care less. I love to cook and bake and I miss going to the store. It is one of the great pleasures of living on the road system, to see what’s in the produce department. I’m not willing to take the chance. I’m not willing to put myself into the category of the 5% of people who develop complications from the virus.

I was put on a ventilator last September and the intubation damaged my vocal cords. Despite the prognosis, I recovered. If I lost my voice permanently, it would be devastating for me and my career. I don’t want to take the chance of being put on a ventilator ever again.

Yes, I’ve had the flu shot before… and still came down with the flu.
Yes, I’ve had the pneumonia shot before… and came down with pneumonia twice that year.
I don’t believe in submitting myself to any more of those vaccines because they only target a select few of the viruses floating around. Viruses mutate and change and make the vaccines unreliable, at best. The best prevention is being careful, staying away from the general public, and teaching people to care more, not less.

With 3 feet of snow on the ground in April, it’s easy to get cabin fever. However, I combat it by taking long walks or going for a drive. There are so many mountain roads and communities to explore!

Is it an extreme reaction? Well, that’s the thing about opinions - everybody has one.

Lucky Teachers

If, during this crisis, you have uttered the words, "Lucky teachers," or something like it, you need to wash your mouth out with soap. Even as a college classroom teacher, it breaks my heart to have to teach online the rest of the semester. Before Spring Break, we were just at midterm, just getting to know one another. Our writing groups were just beginning to bloom. Discussions were becoming lively. Peer editing was becoming more honest and thorough. All of this was just barely starting to happen.

It feels like someone took a machete to my beautiful garden of flowers. Actually, it truly feels like that hailstorm we had last June that ravished my garden, destroying cucumbers and stunting zuchinni. They never recovered. They never reached their full potential.

I was finally back in the classroom for the first time in 3 years. Now, that experience is over, just like that. I feel many things: sadness, angry, helpless, and overwhelmed.

I’m sad not only for myself, not being able to have that classroom interaction, but moreso for my students. They are losing out on quality learning. Many struggle to find adequate internet access. Many have, or had, full time jobs where they are either being asked to work additional hours because they aren’t “in school,” or they have been laid off and are struggling, financially. Just one more stressor has been added to their plates. Most, if not all of my students, said, “Thank you,” to me at the end of every class. They enjoyed our time together. That’s over.

Some of my students are high school juniors and seniors, taking my online course for college credit. Those teenagers won’t have a Prom this year. They won’t attend a graduation ceremony and shake the hand of their principal when he hands them their diplomas. They are home, taking care of younger siblings while trying to complete not only their newly-online high school courses, but also their college course or courses. They are struggling. They are sad. We are all struggling. We are all sad.

I’m angry, too. I’m angry with our POTUS who stuck his head in the sand for weeks while this virus spread from other countries to our own soil, to our own backyard. I’m angry with the absolute ignorance that has led to hoarding, empty store shelves, and “lucky teachers.” I’m angry that I’m now paying for health insurance that I can’t use except in a case of emergency. I was looking forward to getting my teeth cleaned for the first time in a couple of years. I need new glasses, and I’m overdue for my glaucoma testing. I have a lump in my armpit and am overdue for a mammogram. It has all been postponed, indefinitely, right along with my counseling sessions.

I feel helpless. My new position as Writing Support Specialist for the Bristol Bay region was supposed to include traveling to the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands to meet with students and teachers in remote villages about college success and how to improve writing skills. Now, that’s not going to happen for the foreseeable future. Now, I’m scrambling to gather student phone numbers to make personal calls to offer my help in whatever way I can. It’s just not the same.

Yes, I have experience with online teaching. Yes, I’m better prepared than most teachers to deal with this crisis, but I’m wishing for a way to support those other teachers. I have so much that I could offer to them as far as interactive online activities, discussion forums, chat rooms, YouTube videos, creating assignments and tests, and even how to create grading rubrics that work extremely well in an online learning situation. Yet, here I sit, just another teacher in a crisis, unable to connect with students or collaborate with teachers.

Overwhelmed is not a big enough word for how emotionally exhausted I am. The torrent of information, meant to be helpful, is actually drowning me. Thirty-plus emails each day regarding COVID-19 leave me struggling to stay afloat with creating lesson plans. So many online educational resources have stepped up to the plate, making their material free for teachers and students, that it makes for a long, hard slog to find the best tools for my classes. Added to this overflow of information are hour and a half Zoom meetings about online teaching, health and safety, and state and federal mandates that are being updated again and again. It’s relentless.

Lucky Teachers. The 200 year old punishment of washing someone’s mouth out with soap for verbally disrespecting another person applies here with absolute certainty.

So Much

How do I write honestly about my life and thoughts without offending others? That’s a question that I struggle with daily, and it is the main reason that I don’t write and publish more. I could change names and places, but those close to me would still recognize themselves and others.

There is a lot going on both inside of my head and outside, around me, that I would like to write about because I think it might provide insight to others who are going through the same things, or possibly shed light on a topic or situation that folks wonder about.

As you can see, this is my first blog post since last July. It is the first thing that I have written, other than lesson plans and emails, since last July. I have so many words bottled up inside of me, just waiting for an outlet of some small sort. I worry that by merely writing this post, the crack will have been made and the floodgates will now open.

My life has turned on its head since last July. So much change. So much progress. So much pain. So much. So so much.

What to do? What to do...

My Best Friend

Denali

She never walked. She only knew speed.

The old dirt road. The tundra. The beach.
With distances to cross, she took lead.
When rain poured down, on her fur, it’d bead.
That fateful day when the ice was rotten,
She fought but lost to the river’s greed.


Note: This is a Wesh form of poetry known as hir a thoddaid, which consists of these basic rules:

• Six lines
• Lines one through four and six hae nine syllables and share the same end rhyme
• The fifth line has 10 syllables
• There is also a “b” rhyme somewhere near the end of the fifth line and beginning of the sixth line

Leaving

It seems like everything requires more thought when you live simply, even leaving. Gregg and I left the cabin for our first-ever vacation last May, not a visit to see family, a real vacation. Living offgrid with the nearest neighbor eight river miles away requires a lot of forethought be given when getting ready to leave the cabin empty for two weeks. There are hungry, wild critters in the area, the occasional crazy person, and our dog to take into consideration.

Since we don’t have a refrigerator or freezer, in the spring, we have a cooler that sits right outside the front door where we keep fresh meat and vegetables, condiments, and cheese. We spent the last couple of weeks before our departure eating up everything that might go bad over the course of two weeks. The only thing left were some condiments in jars, so Gregg took the cooler downstairs into our storage area which will stay cool during our absence, and detour hungry animals away from the front door of our cabin.

High water when we returned home

Next, we had to make sure the cabin was clear of as much food smell as possible. The jug of old oil needed to be taken to town. The saved bacon grease needed to be used up and the entire kitchen scrubbed clean, including the stovetop. The container that we put eggshells in for compost was taken downstairs to the storage area along with the cooler. All dishes were washed, dried, and put away.

Since our trip would mean we would be away from the cabin when the river started to rise from the snowmelt in the mountains, we had to make sure everything below our lower deck was secured to higher ground (this is also why our greenhouse is on stilts). Sure enough, when we returned, the water was up to the third step!

All of our vegetable starts had to be replanted into their summer homes in the garden and greenhouse, and we made sure everything got a heavy watering the morning of our departure. Even with friends promising to stop by in a week to water things, they’re going to get pretty dry while we’re gone.

Bear Welcome-Mat

Finally, we shut the front door, leaving it unlocked because we’d hate for someone to break a window if they were trying to get into the cabin, and Gregg went around to the back of the cabin to collect the bear welcome mats, three by four foot pieces of plywood with 4-inch nails hammered through and then placed nail side up. We laid one of these in front of the door and one on the back side of the cabin where the deck meets the outhouse trail through the woods. We don’t know for sure if they deter bears, but it makes us feel better. Gregg did have a bear break into the cabin once after stepping on the board, and the bear tracked blood everywhere inside as he continued to tear apart the kitchen cabinets. However, as luck would have it, this was not to be one of those times.

Nuka and Luggage loaded up

It’s an eery feeling as we drive away in a boat loaded down with luggage and our dog. Nuka, our Chocolate Lab, will spend the two weeks with some friends in town who also have a dog. We considered taking her with us, but that’s another $200 airfare and limits our freedom on vacation. She ended up having a terrific time with playmate Kona, a Miniature Blue Heeler.

Planning ahead is a part of our daily life. Whether it’s making sure we take enough fresh meat home with us from town to last until our next trip in or keeping an eye on the weather so we don’t get caught on the river in a storm, forethought is the one necessity for living our simple life.

Electricity

Electricity: a form of energy resulting from the existence of charged particles (such as electrons or protons), either statically as an accumulation of charge or dynamically as a current OR a state or feeling of thrilling excitement.

Our 2,000 watt Honda generator brings us both sides of that definition. The cost of the generator, other than its $1,200 purchase price, is $5.25/gallon of gas, oil changes every 200 hours, and general maintenance, including a heater to help it start in the double-digit sub-zero temperatures of winter where we live. It costs us approximately 75 cents per hour to operate, probably more.

Gregg usually starts the generator when he gets up in the morning so he can check his email and Fantasy Football teams. I get up about an hour after he does and check my emails, Facebook, and Instagram (I call it GrandGram because that’s where I usually see the latest adorable videos of my grandsons). The morning generator also provides us light over the kitchen table and in the kitchen area where Gregg cooks breakfast. However, we do have battery-operated, under-cabinet lighting for those quiet mornings when we don’t want to turn on the generator. It’s just enough light to make coffee in the depths of winter, when the warmth of a kerosene lantern offers a soothing glow to read by.

During the school year, I usually teach some online classes during the day or sew. During the summer, I use electricity less, having no classes to teach and wanting to spend more time outside, in the garden and greenhouse, or just reading and writing. We use the generator an average of 12 hours per day in the winter and 5 hours per day in the summer. Outside of that, we are without electricity.

What do we need electricity for? Vacuuming. Cooking and cleaning on cloudy days. Internet. Sewing machine. Charging tools such as cordless drills and saws. I have a butane iron, and when I have sewing projects to do, I’ll spend one entire day cutting out patterns and ironing them without need for electricity, so that on the days that I need electricity, I spend all day sewing. I also watch Netflix or Amazon Prime while I’m sewing, trying to eek as much as I can out of that 75 cents per hour. Again, mindful living takes a lot of planning and forethought.

In the winter, when we turn the generator off at night, the intense quiet causes my ears to ring, but when I spend the night in town with a friend, the noise keeps me awake. I hear every toilet flush, every time the furnace turns on or off, the refrigerator motor. I hear the pipes making their midnight creaks, the 4-wheelers, snowmachines, and cars going past on the road outside the window, and I long for the ear-ringing silence of home.

In the summer in town, I hear village life. I hear children laughing and playing outside, way past Lower 48 bedtimes. The occasional drunken holler. The spray of gravel as a speeding 4-wheeler cuts the turn too sharp. A late freight delivery flying in from Anchorage. A medivac plane heading to Nome.

At home in the summer, when the generator is off and we finally climb into bed at midnight with the sun still shining outside and windows open to let the mountain breeze cool our tired bodies, the sounds of birds singing, ducks quacking, and fish jumping serenade us to sleep. There is no silence in summer, but rather songs of silence. In the wee hours of this morning, I heard the bird sounds rise sharply to a cacauphony, raised myself up on my elbows in bed to look out the window that serves as our headboard, expecting to see a bear across the river. I didn’t see anything amiss, but the birds were definitely agitated, even the ducks were disturbingly vocal. I snuggled back under the quilt, put a hand on Gregg’s back and as the chirping slowly returned to normal, I was lulled back to sleep.

The loud hum of the generator makes it impossible for me to hear what Gregg is calling up to me from the boat as he unloads the day’s supplies from town. Electricity makes it possible for us to operate a cable-system hoist hooked to a plywood cart on a wooden track and pulled with a winch up the steep hill from the river landing to our cabin, saving us from carrying 40-pound buckets of water and totes of supplies up 40-some stairs. He just built our “Sherpa” this spring because his knees and my back are starting to give out. Aging is not for sissies.

Electricity provides Amazon Prime Music when our one radio station is either off the air because of technical issues, as often happens, or the programming is undesirable, as in offkey acoustic artists that no one’s ever heard of or screamer rock bands. We do have an old stereo system, but the cassette player broke long ago and the CD player quit working recently. Gregg bought the stereo decades ago in a pawn shop in Anchorage, so I guess it’s lived its life to the end, now. I haven’t been able to convince him to part with those CDs yet. In 2017, I finally convinced him to put his cassette tapes in a rummage sale. Not one single tape sold. I’m not sure anyone would buy CDs nowadays. We tend to be a little behind the times.

A lack of electricity does not equate to a lack of excitement. Having the choice of whether or not to have electricity is actually a luxury, not a deficit of some sort. Having control over the mundane sounds that permeate most people’s lives to the point where they don’t hear them gives us a sort of peace. If you have never had the experience of being miles and miles from the nearest road, the nearest motor of any kind, the nearest grid of any kind, you have no knowledge of the term “peace and quiet.” It is the kind of peace that passes all understanding. It is the natural quiet of Mother Earth.