Tag: hike

Caged

Caged

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I know I got out for a walk yesterday but already it feels like I’ve been trapped inside for days, weeks even. It’s all in my head, and it’s all pervasive. This afternoon when the sun peeked through the cloud for a red hot minute and the wind died down from hurricane level to gale force, my husband announced that he was “going outside.” My sons quickly echoed him, the dog, too, jumping up barking his agreement. “You coming?”

I should have said “yup.”

Instead I weighed my need to go outside with my need for five minutes of silence and chose silence. I helped get the kids into coats and kissed smiling faces as they walked out.

I stood for a moment paralyzed by indecision: I have a minimum of five minutes to myself and possibly one hour, what to do? I could paint my nails, something I haven’t done in years but have been jonesing to do for some odd reason (and my nails are wicked short y’all, so this isn’t like a beautification thing, it’s more of a something to do thing). I could continue reading one of the many books I’m in different stages of reading (so many books, so little time). I could journal, something I’ve been desperately needing to do but unable to). I could clean something, our home is a bit of a disaster because no one ever leaves which means it can never get cleaned, and here was an opportunity!

I chose to sit and read.

I definitely should have gone outside. Or gone into my room and done some exercising. Or cleaned something. Anything to get my blood and body moving. Instead I read. And it was lovely. But also, not.

Now I’m restless and feel caged.

I need to hike, despite having done so yesterday. The hike I need is more than yesterdays little mile long jaunt. The hike I need would be two miles one way. A hike with journal and pen and thermos of hot tea. My dog, now dead but very much alive in this vision of my needs, at my side, panting happily. Out to a fallen tree we’re drawn, flopping down against it and marveling at the sky, the clouds, the cold, the birds, the small flowers. I write and write and write, my dog occasionally jumping up to investigate the movements of a squirrel or chipmunk before returning, sneezing his joy at our adventure.

The hike I need exists in my memories. I could re-create the hike. Get the family dog, grab a journal and pen and thermos of hot tea. Ask husband and kids to stay home together for a few hours while mommy has some alone time. This could happen if I ask for it. It might even be a good hike. It might even ease the restless. Still, it would not be the hike of my memories, the hike I need.

My dog is buried under an oak across from the barn. It’s the unofficial cemetery on our property. The previous home owners have a dog out there. We have a goat out there. I suspect the previous home owners have a mountain lion out there, too. It’s as good a place as any to be buried. A beautiful view of a mountain. A cool tree in the summer. People walking past every day on their way to collect eggs from the barn.

I realize this virus has me terrified that everyone I love will die unexpectedly.

My dog was perfectly fine. Fine. Young still, even for a big dog. And then one night he was panting, non-stop panting, and whining. At first I was annoyed, what had he eaten that was disagreeing with him so much and why wouldn’t he just go outside and throw it up, maybe I would have to give him peroxide. After a deep breath to calm my irritation I got out of bed and went to him, pacing. I held his big beautiful head in my hands and put my forehead to his forehead, a gesture of love I also do with my sons but didn’t realize until this moment.

I am trying to communicate telepathically with him: tell me what is wrong.

I begin running my hands along his slender body and suddenly I feel them: masses everywhere. Where did they come from? I had just run my hands along his body the day before, that morning even. Where had all these masses come from? Further inspection reveals that they are not the fatty tissue that sometimes develops on older dogs, the masses that hang off these dogs like golf balls and tennis balls shoved into too tight pockets. These are not fatty tissue. These are cancerous lumps.

The cancer is everywhere.

There is nothing I can do for my dog, not at 10:30 at night with the children asleep and the one needing boob in another hour or so. There are no emergency veterinarians anywhere near us. There is nothing I can do until morning. Only my dog can’t sleep. Can’t sit or lay down. Everything is panting and whining, pain. I ask my husband which of his pain meds is the strongest and he goes to the medicine cabinet and pulls out a bottle that’s been expired for over a year.

A 150 pound man should take one pill. I give my 60 pound dog two.

After an hour he finally lays down and sleeps. The sleep lasts roughly six hours. Then the pacing, panting, and whining begin again. My dog is in pain. My dog who was perfectly fine 24 hours ago is now dying painfully of cancer before my eyes.

And this is why I’m restless and caged today. Because my dog died nearly a year ago after being fine one day and riddled with cancer the next. Because this fucking virus is everywhere and we could already have it and not know it. Because my mom is over 60 and my immunocompromised husband lives with our two kids who are germ farms. Because everyone is fine today but what happens if they start whimpering in pain tonight?

After naming my restless I calm down. After naming my panic and fear I am not quite free, but also not so caged.

~~~That’s one hour~~~

Pessimist or Realist

Pessimist or Realist

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I live pretty far away from things, it’s a good hour plus drive to a Costco and while my little town has a grocery store it’s one of those pay three times as much as you would anywhere else because of fuel charges kind of store. Once a week, every week, I used to (in my pre-quarantine days) go down the hill (that’s what we call leaving the mountain) with my kids so we could all visit with my mom for a few hours and have lunch, then the kids and I would go grocery shopping and run any other errands that can only be accomplished down the hill.

I haven’t been down the hill in two weeks. I was supposed to go tomorrow because Costco Instacart delivery won’t deliver up here but they will deliver to my mom. She was able to get us some things we haven’t been able to get since all this panic began, things like baby wipes. For our baby. Who poops in a diaper and then we have to wipe it. With baby wipes. Which have 0% alcohol in them. And yet…people are hoarding baby wipes that don’t kill the Coronavirus and for what? But I digress, I was supposed to go down the hill tomorrow to pick up the order of stuff she was able to get delivered to her house for us.

The plan was that everything would be out by the garage. I could arrive, load up my car, wave through the living room window at her, maybe call her cell and talk to her on the phone as we stared at each other through the window. You know, first world tragic stuff. And then afterwards I’d go to the grocery store and see if there was any fresh produce I could purchase since we haven’t eaten anything fresh in a week. But sadly plans got changed around and now it looks like I won’t be going down until Monday.

This sucks, y’all. I was equal parts dreading this trip, because of the grocery store part, and needing this escape from my home and immediate family. And I could say that it makes me a horrible person to say that, and maybe it does, but the truth of the matter is: there is no one I would rather be in isolation with than my husband and kids and also I desperately need to get away from my husband and kids. I need roughly twenty minutes, but two hours would be heaven, of silence. I need to be in my own head while also physically busy doing something (driving would be perfect) so that I can concentrate on my thoughts without concentrating on them.

Did that make any sense at all?

I will admit that for a moment I considered not telling my husband the plans had changed to Monday. I considered saying nothing and leaving tomorrow and getting my time to myself and then coming home and shrugging, oh man, plans changed but I was already down the hill, sorry it took me so long to turn around and get back…. But that would be shitty. Just like when I consider staying in the shower longer than I technically need to.

Because the truth is, if I told my husband, I desperately need two hours to myself he would shrug and say, “go! Do it!” He would have absolutely no problem with it whatsoever. And as I type this out and realize the truth I’ve known but not admitted to myself I wonder why the hell I still haven’t turned to him and said “I desperately need two hours to myself!”

I think part of it is just recognizing that I could have this time to myself if I asked for it, allows me to breathe a little deeper and not be quite so desperate for it. I think part of it is that I desperately want that time to myself and I also can’t stand to be apart from my family for one minute, and especially right now. Seeing them and hearing them and being with them reassures me that they are okay, that I am okay, that we are alive and surviving. So even though I need my space, I also can’t bring myself to take it.

I think the answer is a family hike. We all need to get out and move. We all need some fresh air and some outside time. We can all be together but also be in our heads. Writing that out feels right. Writing that out feels like, “ah, yes, that is the answer.” And so I have just therapized myself through writing. Huzzah!

It’s fascinating to me how often I can be spinning out inside my mind, spiraling into anger or frustration (same thing), not able to figure out why, and then just sitting and writing for a moment allows me the space to work through it. Like earlier at the dinner table, my leg was jumping up and down, up and down, up and down, and my husband asks “nervous?” And I was like “yes, I’m anxious, which really means I’m afraid but I don’t know what I’m afraid of.” And that’s when I had to stop and breathe and realize that I was afraid not of going to the store so much as the store not having what we need.

While the store being out of what we need is a legit fear it’s also ridiculous for us. We live so far away that we are always pretty well backstocked on stuff. And sure, I was supposed to restock our TP supply right as the pandemic hit and thus we are actually running quite low on TP and those baby wipes I was wha-whaing about earlier. But the thing is, we are okay. We are extremely lucky. We have stuff in the freezer and stuff on our shelves. We can go at least one more week just making up random meals based on what we scrounge through and those random meals will be decent.

The bigger fear really is that I fear this will go on much longer than anticipated.

I told a girlfriend on text last night that I expect it will be August before things will slow down. It shocked me when I sent it because I hadn’t realized I believed that until I saw it in writing. But I do. She was shocked. And I texted that they originally predicted it would peak in May but that I think that’s too optimistic. I’m not usually this pessimistic. And then I saw posts about schools remaining closed until Fall and realized, I’m not being a pessimist, I’m being a realist.

Or maybe I just really need to get outside for a hike.

~~~That’s one hour~~~

Doing Our Best

sundaydutroLeave a comment

We went to the desert today to go hiking. A spot not many people go to or know about prior to COVID-19, and sure enough we didn’t see anyone the entire time we were out. Not even parked cars along the route of people hiking some other trail off the main one. We were outside in the sun and wind and clouds for hours and it was amazing. It was also eerie.

From the top of a mountain we looked down at the highways and saw no cars.

We hiked for a good long while, as much of a good long hike as you can have with a four-year-old and a one-year-old who isn’t doing much in the way of walking right now and thus needs to be carried. Clean air. Fresh blooming flowers. Sage.

We collected handfuls of sage to bring the outside inside.

We drove a bit further and stopped along an extremely popular hiking through trail that also happens to have the perfect fallen tree that acts as a bench and ate our packed lunch: tuna salad with avocado and almond crackers. A couple apples. We walked a portion of the trail, just so I could finally say “I’ve walked a portion of the PCT.”

There were no hikers.

We continued to drive through to the other highway that would loop us around and back home. We finally saw someone. On a bike. An older man, certainly over sixty, most likely a prime candidate for the entire self-isolation movement. He slowed down as though he wanted to chat. We waved and mouthed “hi” as we drove through. He waved back.

This is social distancing without a couch.

And then we blew it. We were driving back towards town and saw two through-hikers who needed a lift into town. It’s a long hike into town. The clouds are coming in good now and the wind has picked up. It is very, very cold outside. These two kids need to get in out of the storm and fast. The cab of our truck is full with two adults and two kids in car seats, but our truck has a shell on it and the dog is in back.

We stop for the hikers.

The hikers have no problem climbing in back with the dog. They’re shivering. They say they want a hotel and food and they’ll go anywhere we think will take them. We close them up in the back, tell them to bang the glass if they need us to stop before we get to town. We start driving, and texting with a true trail angel to see if she wants hiker company for the night.

She’s had a strange day.

She pulls over and waits for us to get up the hill with our hikers. We pull over and ask the hikers if they still want to go to town and pay for a hotel and pay for food or if they want to go home with the world’s most epic trail angel where they’ll have showers, laundry, food, beer, and a game room all for free.

The hikers jump in with her.

We continue on our way home. We have our homemade kombucha and discuss how grateful we are to come home to a wood stove and to have spent a day together. Yes, we broke isolation by letting trail hikers ride in the back of our truck. Yes, we broke isolation by stopping to let those hikers get a much better deal for the night than a hotel would give them.

We are not learning from Italy.

My kids are perfectly healthy. I’m perfectly healthy. We are probably carriers if we have been exposed. My husband is currently, knock-on-wood, perfectly healthy. He is also immunocompromised. We risk his health more than ours when we do what we did today.

My joy at helping others could soon be tempered.

This is my greatest fear. Not that I may have compromised my husbands immune system by breaking isolation, although that terrifies me more than I know how to put into words, but that I may become too afraid to help others. And yes, it’s fine to say, just let the people who don’t have immunocompromised people in their family be the helpers. And yes, it’s fine to say, just let the people who don’t have 60+ people in their family be the helpers.

Expecting others to be the helpers seems pretty entitled.

When we returned home I saw an invite on social media to join a group for helpers in our area. A group for those who want to help and for those who need help. I haven’t yet seen anyone raise their hand needing help, and I’m grateful. I’m hopeful no one will need it.

I feel like a hypocrite.

I will wait for someone who needs eggs, then I’ll deliver to their doorstep fresh from our hens. I will wait for someone who needs rice, then I’ll deliver from our enormous Costco bag purchased before the panic buying began. I will wait for someone who needs a smile, then I’ll FaceTime with them and my goofy children.

I will do my best.

~~~That’s one hour~~~