Hello from a Distance [by Cara Benson]

The author encounters a chorus of clacking wood frogs in a vernal pool. Photo © Cara Benson

I already live in the middle of nowhere. I say “already” because before non-essential workers were told to stay at home, I not only already worked here but spent much of my time in its vicinity. I live on a mountain, so to go somewhere means to really go somewhere. I suppose some would call it a hill, but there is a USGS bench mark dating from 1925 embedded in a stone in my driveway. The gold-colored emblem reads 1439 feet above sea level. Not high country by most standards, but I can say that I didn’t make it home one night last winter because of the slope of the road in weather. It snows up here when it’s rain in the valley. And blooms at this elevation run about two weeks behind those even halfway down to the flat. Hill enough. Culturally, it’s the kind of region where I’d heard words like “these parts” and “stick to themselves” the few times I did cross paths with locals. Truth is, I can get in my car and drive to a market in about 20 minutes. For city dwellers or suburbanites, though, you would feel isolated at my place, and you’d be right. 

As far as I’m concerned, I am unbelievably lucky to live here. Privileged, even, and in  more ways than one (see: work from home, for starters). In terms of shelter-in-place and #stayhome #savelives in specific, I’ve got it damn good. I can leave the house every day and run into nary a human at an unsafe distance, if I see anyone else out and about, at all. And shall I tell you now that my home is a former church, replete with high ceilings and two floors at 1400 sq ft each? My shelter is nothing but wide open space with windows onto the woods and fields surrounding it. The cooped up feeling that apartment dwellers or entire families suddenly home 24-7 in small-roomed houses are suffering from isn’t an issue for me. 

Which isn’t to say that I’m unaffected by COVID-19. I miss humans terribly. I am alone in this huge home (save two cats who would be pissed if they understood what I just wrote). Like many of us, I am grieving, and outraged, and, frankly, struggling to stay above depression. This contraction of living is particularly painful, coming as it has right as rising spring began its pull on my biology. Add to that an eagerness to contribute that’s been necessarily muted. Other than donating $15 when I can or checking in on a friend, as an unessential worker my best offer to society, I’m told, is to stay home, especially because I can. So, like many, I am. 

I do, however, go for daily walks. In fact, that’s another “already.” I was already a walker. Hiking mountains, trekking in woods, or bopping even trotting along a tree-lined roadside, it’s always been crucial for my psyche, as well as my body, to get out and move (another privilege, I realize).  Sometimes existential, others material, worries lurk and surge more than I typically care to admit. But then, isn’t that what it means to be human – to be both privy to and racked by self-consciousness? Which ultimately means that we live with an awareness of our death. Even worse, though, is to feel that we’ve lived all wrong on the way to that end. Maybe that’s another “already” the virus is exacerbating: the thought that we’re wasting our lives (and also the knowledge we’re wasting others’). 

Trout lily leaf encountered during a daily walk through the forest. Photo © Cara Benson

Whatever their source, the worries, I need to walk away from them at least once every day. Or to try to. Of course my anxieties and mental tics accompany me, but putting one foot in front of the other, over and over, helps me to walk my way out of ill thinking, like shedding muddy clothes across the floor to the shower. I walk and talk, mutter and hum, swing my arms, stumble, curse at roots, then gasp at a flash of unexpectedly fluffy expanse of the upturned tails of deer dashing through the woods, my approach having flushed them out. Or a chorus of clacking wood frogs in a vernal pool calls me to the edge of the soup with its rotting logs and prickling sticks clumped in defense. At once their racket cuts out. The frogs freeze, as if they’re holding their breath – and I find that I am! My head racket has been shocked into what’s in front of me, the sensory stimulation triggering my animal impulses and curiosity. 

That’s about all I’m good for, these days: foraging on foot, nosing into pockets of forest that hold intricate evidence of life beyond the confines of my solitary imagining. Yes, that seems about right. It’s my imagination that’s tanked. At this point in the pandemic (day ???), I am able to “get my head around” exactly nothing. I have no brilliant macro take nor supposition that doesn’t feel off. I’ve been struggling to read anything other than what might be called story, and the smaller the better. Please, no overarching metaphors or symbols for what’s happening. The virus unraveling our already frayed safety net is real enough without it. (I realize that’s a metaphor. Also, that I’ve already used them. I’m allowing myself the contradictions – better that than pints of ice cream.)

Pillows and cradles in the earth of uncultivated forest. Mating pairs of Canadian geese floating on an isolated pond. Moss covered stones big enough for me to hug. Shelf lichen. Great Horned Owls hooting. Trout lily leaves poking up out of the leaf covered forest floor. Walking among them is what’s saving me. That awareness put me in a mind that maybe describing what these walks reveal could be of use – something I can contribute safely. I’m calling these my daily dispatches from a distance, though they won’t be quite that frequent. It’s the idea of dailiness that interests me. Time as our dream, a malleable recurring dream (did it again). The repetition that alters with each visitation. See you next time.  

Cara Benson's writing has been published in The New York Times, Boston Review, Best American Poetry, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. Kevin Young chose her poem Banking for the Best American Poetry 2011. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, she lives in upstate New York. www.carabensonwriter.com  

Comments

[John Collins]

Thanks for taking me on your walk, can't wait till I hear more from Cara! Feels as if I'm in Church with Cara's when reading her excellent prose.

[Julie Ackerman]

Beautiful. Thank you, Cara. I felt like I was on a walk with you on the mountain, in fresh clean spring air. It gave me some much needed breathing room this morning.

[Michele]

Ahhhh! So I'm not alone in my thinking around this pandemic (thank goodness). I take my walks with more of a "job like" intention with exercise at it's core. Thanks for the reminder to breathe and take it all in! The church, the cats, the walks, frogs & deer. Love.

[Cara Benson]

Thanks everyone!

[Dan Wilcox]

Stay negative!