It’s April 9th. April, not March as I was thinking it was a few moments ago. I lost March somehow. That’s the problem with isolation. I’m losing track of time because one day is just like the next one. But not so for nature.
Nature Marks Her Changes
I heard a Chuck Will’s Widow this morning for the first time this year. Such a glorious sound heralding warmer weather. It was further away from my house than normal. Likely because of all the forest clearing that has happened the past two months. I didn’t hear it until I went outside even though my windows were open. It lifted my heart all the same.
That sound is one of the signs that I always look for when the spring weather starts to turn a little warmer. It seemed a bit early, though. I thought it was still March and we must be having an early spring this year. My first sighting, or rather “hearing”, of Chuck Will’s Widow has traditionally been in April so it showed up right on time. But I was removed from the current realm of time. I’ve lost the month of March because I don’t have normal milestone markers to tell me what has passed or what to look forward to. Time is standing still because one day looks the same as the next or the previous one.
How We Deal With Change
CWW was right on time, as is all of nature. Nature may be adjusting to changing weather conditions and climate change, but not to COVID-19. That’s a comforting thought for them, but what of us who are in indefinite isolation? Animals have a hard time adapting to sudden catastrophic changes, but humans seem to be able to deal with that. When there are slow chronic changes the animals have it over us. They don’t try to change things to make everything normal, they adjust as necessary. We, on the other hand, seem to want to normalize slow-moving changes, like the climate, to make it appear as if we are easily adaptable.
The end of this year is going to be nothing like the beginning for me. There will be cleared land in front of my house where there was previously a forest. I saw the full moon shining on the recently cleared field this morning, and I couldn’t believe how bright it was. I could walk into the night without a flashlight and find my way around. There will definitely be changes at my house.
The cleared land reflects changes in me that have come this year. Sometimes you need unplanned events to come along and shake up your norm so that you can assess whether or not you’re on the right path (note: I almost wrote “the write path”).
Accepting the Challenge
I have been journaling for two years and telling myself that I was going to write. Along comes social isolation giving me the time to write, and I don’t do it. But then from nowhere appear the things I needed all along, and things start falling into place.
At the beginning of the year I knew there needed changes in my life. I was planning to move and as I listed my desires for a suitable location, it became clear that I wanted space and a view. Less than a month later the land clearing started around my house. It was unexpected but it is better than I could have imagined.
I wanted a place to walk, and now I can walk up to three miles by simply stepping out my front door. I needed to find like-minded friends, and suddenly a group of online writers appear. It’s, again, so much more than I asked for.
I Look Forward to New Things This Year
I look forward to the changes this year holds for me. I need my environment to look different to reflect the internal changes I’ve been going through. COVID-19 and isolation kickstarted things for me, but I believe I will continue to make more and better changes on my own. I think that social isolation may become an annual activity. Hopefully, not to the extent we are seeing it at the moment, but I believe we will practice it in some form. As such, we should prepare for the months of isolation and renewal.
Maybe we should mimic the natural world and hibernate in the winter. Our current winter holiday activities might need to be downward adjusted so that there isn’t a spread of viruses as we’ve seen this year. An ounce of prevention, and all that.
Written 4/9/2020
