journaling in the pandemic

“I hope you’ll write about it,” I say to my 16 and my 10 year old, “we’re living through what will become Big History.” Will I write about it, too? I haven’t been. Not really. Then I remembered I have this blog and I almost never use it. I’ve turned off “share this all over the Internet” and think I’m going to keep some journal-type thoughts here.

At the moment, we are in my parents’ summer place up in the mountains of Maine. We’re here just for a few days. We brought all the food we’ll need; we won’t visit any stores while we are here. (We’re a good 10 miles from any stores anyway.) If any of us start showing symptoms, we’ll go back to Portland (not take up space in the rural hospital). Everything is covered with snow, though it reach 50 degrees today. It’s strange being here off-season; I’m usually here to plant, tend, or harvest the garden.

In a minute I’m going to back-date some posts of photos I took since we began sheltering in place. I’ve been sheltering in place since the beginning of March when I was sick (with a fever, chest cold, and sinus infection) and didn’t want to be out and about spreading my germs.

This won’t be written carefully (draft, edit, review, re-work, etc. high-quality writing). It’ll be mostly stream-of-consciousness. Whatever’s on my mind at the moment. Written for me, but written here in public because my old process of posting on my blog feels comforting.