Let me say, I feel a little disingenuous sending this out. Unlike being able to express emotion recollected in tranquility, Posting now about a walk I took days ago. I find that delaying writing puts me at a distance from the stuff--hard to make lively when I've sunk back into torpor.
Which I'm having--like everyone else? There is a big difference between working from home in isolation--my default--and working from home in enforced isolation--very much not default. So far I've come up with no words for this.
But I'm lucky. It's spring. Walking seems better than driving, as there is no place to go. And we have the good fortune to be close to a bike path that runs along the narrow but lovely Jacob's Point conservation area/salt marsh. There is greater good fortune in that at a certain spot not too far from where we step onto the path, there is a small slimy trail through the reeds that leads to the shore of the Warren River (this is really an estuary, but all of the estuaries are called rivers). When the tide is low, the two rivulets that feed into it and cut up the beach shrink enough that you can step over them and can walk far along it (far in RI being less than a mile, which is sad). And there is no one there. In truth, there is practically no one there even in the most normal of times. It always feels like a kind of away from it all (though this is Rhode Island and you're never out of sight of houses--Picture cleverly cropped to avoid these). But now, oh my god, how especially lovely to have escaped from the worry of social distance.
So I'm living by the tide tables . Right now, unfortunately, low tide at 7am and pm--when I wrote this, low tide at 3:30. Prime time. Not being an early early riser, I'm debarred until it reaches 8:30.
But (because complaint is really my métier). A key insidious phrase in that long paragraph is "a certain spot not too far down from where we step onto the path." Because "not too far" has suddenly become a gauntlet, and a very long one, of terror. OK, if not terror, than annoyance to anger, depending on egregiousness. The path is lovely, and it's a privilege to be able to enjoy the walk. But. Apparently "outdoors" to the very entitled people on the path is a free pass from social distance. It is fairly easy to escape the pedestrians who also are cautious (except families, who give others (i.e., me) entire responsibility for avoiding children in Brownian motion). But I have developed a hatred of (fairer to say that my existing hatred has geometrically increased in regard to) people who engage in activities that require special clothing. Namely, cyclists and runners. Who come up behind you flinging sweat (baseline hatred) and breathing hard (amplified hatred). And brush close to you as they race their entitled selves by (baseline hatred magnified to incandescent rage). As though going fast will protect them. Nick won't walk on the path anymore. But I keep muttering into my collar, "Only a little farther" and am rewarded.
