Matters of scale

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 21:58:14 GMT

Today was the work flight. The world remains amazing from a helicopter. It's such a varied and intimate way of looking at the landscape.

We went up there with... my ipad. And. That was it. I had maps with waypoints that we used to navigate, and I pointed a lot. And I took lots of notes and pictures. It was a bumpy day; by the end of the 3 hours my stomach was a little displeased but that seemed to be pretty good: when I climbed out of the helicopter the pilot said admiringly, "you didn't puke or anything!"

And it was beautiful and free and lovely. I saw local communities I hadn't seen before. There were 300 swans, roughly, on the river between the two lakes where they overwinter. I got to think about something other than COVID and relationships. I got to ask the pilot, who's flown here for 2 generations, what's changed and what most surprised him.

When we flew over some of the many, many frozen lakes we saw lots of snowmobile tracks and a couple folks out walking. Speaking of social distancing, they were tiny specks on a huge empty shining surface. There were folks up in the back end of nowhere living in trailers. Many of these communities are from three to a dozen homes, speaking of social distancing.

In the world, several small communities have barred visitors: many islands in BC, more remote towns, and some First Nation reserves.

Meat and eggs are sold out of our local stores, but I saw a supply truck this morning so maybe not anymore? The liquor store is closed. I have a 5-gallon bucket half-full of eggs at home that gets fuller everyday and could put 250 pounds of pork cuts in my freezer out of my herd without batting an eye.

I need to do my tomato and pepper starts, I'm a week late at this point.

I have acorns growing. Maybe someday the oaks will feed another generation of pigs, will be ground into flour to ride out another person's isolation. First they need to get their roots into the ground.

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Greenstorm's Journal

Matters of scale