(This post is part of a series of daily letters from me to my future children reporting from the emerging paradigm.)
Dear Kids:
I drove up to Hurricane Ridge with mom (Nanny) this morning. Her spouse Pat had gone up with her photographer buddies a couple of weeks ago and I was jealous.
I’ve been hearing about Hurricane Ridge and how it’s “Like the Sound of Music” in the high mountain meadows covered with wildflowers. We never had enough time to visit Hurricane Ridge during the season on my previous visits before I moved here and when I finally got here in November it was already too snowy to go.
I’ve been asking when it’s okay to go and finally when Pat went I was like YAY LET’S DO THIS! But, we had a lot of Corona risk factors to keep in mind.
I live in a beautiful part of the world that is very touristy, especially in the summer. In my new place in the neighborhood I can hear the highway clearly and I know that there’s a ton of traffic headed right for the nature destinations to the East. (It’s also where the closest big box stores are, I’m sure there’s local traffic to account for.)
To dodge tourism we decided to go up early in the morning on a Thursday, departing at 8am and arriving just after 9. It was already fairly bustling with people while we ventured on our mountain path walk through the wildflowers and by the time it was 10:15AM there were more cars and people than I’d be comfortable with.
Only about 75% of folks were wearing masks up on the trails and in the parking lot even less people. Stressful, especially given all the info I keep reading about how even with a mask if a covid infected person isn’t wearing a mask it puts you at risk.
Hard to think of that and see other humans choosing not to wear masks and have compassion and empathy. I kept having to remind myself when I’d have a judgment thought loop beginning, “The heart of life is good.” I say it again and again. The script that my ego/judgment brain goes to is, “It’s HUMANS THAT ARE THE VIRUS.”
The heart of life is good.
There were magical wildflowers, my mom definitely did not wild forage wildflower seed pods and hide them in her pocket, and we had a lovely day looking at the trees, the mountains in the distance, Canada and a perfect little snowpile on a shady slope that looked like a heart.
A lovely morning hoping that the goodness of life will grow through this snowbank of a pandemic.
xoxo,
Mom
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