Love in the time of Covid-19

I searched my mind and the cabin for 

someting I could use for a mask. This is

the best I could come up with. The face 

covering was tucked and zippered into the

 earflap of this hat I bought on impulse at 

REI.  It's stretchy, so snug. What do you

 think?

As the time grows closer to leave the East Pole for the year, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how the world has changed since I came out here in early December. Of course the biggest thing is the Covid - 19 business. I listen carefully to what people say on the news or on reliable internet sites and I think I have a handle on how to act in the new world. One part of it demands quite a change in attitude for most people and myself in particular. When there have been mobile diseases in the past I think most of us, and me for sure, have overlooked consideration for the other guy. I think we mostly protected ourselves and while maybe paying lip service to our own fault in spreading the flu, I doubt most people give that much thought as they get their flu shots and go about their business. This time the emphasis is on spreading the disease to the other guy as much as it is an attempt to protect ourselves.

Being isolated in the woods like this, I haven't had to deal with it either way. I've only spent any time with two people out here and that was more than three weeks ago and no symptoms. I did make a couple of shopping trips and tried to be careful. I didn't notice many people wearing masks or gloves but I did notice people attempting to keep some distance from others. Those were more than two weeks ago. Still nothing.

Now, looking ahead, I am what they call elderly at the age of 77 so I am considered susceptible even though I am in excellent health and after a winter out here in some of the best physical shape of my life. My doctor calls me a fine specimen. But I suppose I have to consider age susceptibility. I never get the flu, and least haven't for more years than I can remember so I don't bother with the shot. And, for the most part living alone and seldom going out in public except for food and mail I don't feel much danger as long as I take some measure of preparation.

But it's about those others, the ones who face greater danger than I do and I think I am going to go mask and gloves more for them than for me. For example I have a friend who is now enduring treatment for a serious form of cancer and that means chemo. And, chemo means a compromised immune system. He wrote on facebook the other day that he had to go to a store for food. He went early in the morning and encountered only a few others in the store. But, among as I recall maybe 20 others, only one wore a mask and one other wore gloves. He wrote in anger. Maybe all those people feel strong enough to go without protection my friend rightfully so thought those people were taking chances with his life too. The inconsiderate were actually threatening people more likely to be infected.

Then there's the case of my friend Joe May.

Joe May is one of the toughest and most interesting people anyone could hope to meet. He grew up on the tugboats and ore ships of the Great Lakes. He fought as a young Marine in Korea. After coming to Alaska he won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and ran the Yukon Quest, another thousand-mile race. He went on to sail the big oceans with his wife for several years before returning to Alaska and taking up residence in a place called Trapper Creek, a widespread community of cabins more than 100 miles north of Anchorage. 

He has faced so many dangers and so many hardships in his adventures even he can't remember them all and he has faced them with a scholar's attitude and subtle down home humor. He might tell you how he packed his sled for a trip in Greenland, along the way explaining Mawson's mistake when he and his crew almost died in Antarctica in the early part of the last century. When asked to write about sled dogs he went back to their roots in Siberia long before any of them set a paw on North American soil. Along the way he has met some pretty tough challenges and one way or another survived them all.

Now, Joe at the age of 84, is facing a danger and a difficulty over which he has no control. Like most of us who are aging he endures some serious health problems, but takes them with good humor. Then this Corona virus came along and it's something out of our reach. We older folks have been designated as particularly susceptible to the virus and we're told that we need to take extra care about interactions with other people no matter how tough we think we are. Living as isolated as we do, that shouldn't be difficult unless others don't adhere to the same social distancing rules. 

They endanger all of us but if the health officials are to be believed they are a particular danger to the aging. Here we are in Alaska with its low population and living away from the busier centers where we may be less susceptible but it only takes one careless person to reach out and touch us; still we see people in pictures crowding beaches, supposedly religious leaders still holding services for thousands of people with no regard to the dangers they present to themselves and others. And as Joe points out in a message he sent a neighbor, even our friends ignore the warnings. Joe sent me the following today:

            I made a trip out into the neighborhood today and was stunned. People were standing around, nose to nose in casual conversations or asshole to elbow in the store. I wore a mask and gloves and was stared at like some sort of freak.

            At first I was depressed and then got angry. If these fools want to kill themselves and each other, well, that's their business...but I get resentful when they put Sandra and myself at risk. I want to live long enough for some fishing this summer. All it will take is one infected person out there to turn this place into a Brevig Mission kind of Petri dish. Be careful.

Joe

So as I contemplate moving from this neighborhood to that other one, I have all this to consider about how to function in this brave new world. I know one thing, I plan to be much more conscious of that other person I come in contact with and do what I can to protect them from me. And I can only hope others will show me the same consideration.