Surviving Adverse Seasons

Fox kit near our driveway.

At the quantum level, a body can be in two places at once. In ordinary life, however, that is exceedingly difficult... at least for me. We have been out of Tanzania and making life in an entirely new setting for a bit over a month, and it is beginning to feel hard to believe that we have a fully furnished home in Arusha, complete with cat. I don't know how long it will be before we can go back, and what the new normal there might look like. We have tickets for early August, but it is hard to know what restrictions will be on travel then.

Tanzania has active community spread of COVID-19. The Govt. is working hard to control disinformation or create panic about the spread by making it illegal to report any numbers that do not come from the Ministry of Health. I understand the desire to keep information as accurate as possible, but I am also aware of how limited the capacity of the Ministry of Health is to test and track all cases in the country. Thus far, most of the cases are in Dar Es Salaam. I do not know how severe the virus will be in a country with such a wide population pyramid (more than 50% of the population is under 16). Could it be less severe? Unfortunately, we will probably have the answer to that question in the next few months as it will not likely be contained. Social distancing and lockdowns are even more severe in such a resource-poor setting and may not even be possible for more than a few weeks.

Life at Charter Hall has settled into a sustainable routine. Rebecca and I are very committed to daily ritual and having had to give up swimming, we still get up early but either walk, run, or do a high impact interval training youtube video to start the day. Starting out vigorously is helpful to both of us, as Rebecca spends much of the morning overseeing the school work of David and Oren, and I go to virtual work with MCC on my computer.

Things that are not replaceable, even with virtual technology is the sense of community we have been building the past three years. Rebecca and I have both been very active in our church in TZ. She has been on the Church Council and the Worship Committee, while I have been very involved in Christian Education and head of Sunday School. I realize now how traumatizing the precipitous ending was. We were there one week, then school was cancelled, church was closed and we were gone the next. This is just as true of our small group and our home. We really had no time to say goodbye, and of course, there is nothing to replace those things where we are, in isolation.

And yet, surviving an adverse season requires stillness, I believe, and the capacity to forget as well and fully experience the present. Nietzche said it more poetically:

We immediately conclude that no happiness, no serenity, no hope, no pride, no enjoyment of the present moment could not exist without the possibility of forgetting.

In the present, there is much for which to be grateful. Watching spring come in has been a rare gift out here in the marshlands by the Bay. We have a regular cadre of visitors who pass by our windows in the morning. Two geese, a mated pair who occasionally even bring their goslings down for a swim by our dock. A piliated woodpecker, looking for bugs in a tree stump in front of our house. A mated pair of bald eagles, who roost between fishing expeditions in the tree over our chimney. A highlight is the fox family, a male and female and four kits who have a den by the drive. We see them frequently and can often get within a few meters of the kits when they are resting in the sun on one of the few warm days. Other animals include a herd of deer, a rat snake, box turtle, field mice, toads, great blue herons, ospreys, cormorants, and merganser ducks. (Pictures all over the blog.)

David likes to take walks along the rocky beach at low tide, or into the woods when the water is high. Fishing is also a pastime that David and I enjoy. He has been scavenging many old lures and bobbers on his beach expeditions and we have tried several out. Spring is a good season to fish because the watermilfoils (grasses) are not overgrown so it is easy to cast a line. David and I catch bass off the dock every day on worms and salvaged plugs, and have eaten some of them.

Weather in April was hard. We had a bit of a tease in March with a warm couple of days on our arrival (around 70F). It gave us hope that we had missed the worst of winter, but were disappointed to find most of April very cold. We had fires in the fireplace in the evenings, but getting out for exercise in the morning, or even in the living room required a sweatsuit and a hat. Many days were grey as well, which added to the sense of melancholy that seemed to hang in our suspended lives. We were able to go out in canoes about once the entire month, and there was no room for error in terms of tipping over into the frigid water. 

We had one exciting weather day, a squall, about two weeks ago. One of the risks of living 20 feet from the shoreline is a high wind and flood tide. The morning of the storm we could tell something was different. There was a warm wind coming up from the South. Not the cold North wind to which we are accustomed. The wind became more and more intense all morning and pushed the tide higher than we have ever seen. Our front yard was underwater, as well as the dock which usually sits about 6 feet over the low tide mark. Another foot and it would have been at our front door. There was a tornado warning as well, but for the most part, it was mainly windy with high water. Very little rain, and weirdly warm, like a hurricane. After rising for most of the day, the water began subsiding in mid-afternoon. By the time the water went back down we found a number of trees and driftwood lying on our lawn and we spent several hours cleaning it up. By evening the weather was clear and we had a beautiful sunset that seemed to be gaslighting us. (Storm, what storm?)

We have gone to Rebecca's parents house twice since being here. We make some effort at social distancing with them and do wear masks. Most of our time together is spend outdoors. We helped them pick up several trash cans full of horse manure for their garden. Oren and David helped with weeding and lawn mowing. This past weekend they came out to Charter Hall and we went out on canoes together, took a hike, and had dinner together. I think it was great for them to get away from the house.

The last thing I will mention this month is the loss of a dear family friend, and the first virtual memorial service I have attended. Charlene was a family friend of both Rebecca and I for nearly 50 years. She was also a great lover of the outdoors and used to bring her kayak out to Charter Hall quite a bit. When we came back she was in the final stages of cancer and died in our third week here. Sadly we could never go visit her in hospice during this time of coronavirus. Fortunately, her children were allowed to be with her at the end.

We had a memorial service for her on Zoom. Someday there will probably be a funeral service for her. It is a reminder of the unique challenges this virus poses. Dying alone, and grieving privately. These are difficult times.