Ode to the End

Covid Diaries, March 7, 2021, Freeport, Maine

It will be a year next Sunday when, swift as a sparrow crashing into a window, the arrival of this century’s pandemic shattered our orderly lives here in the forest at the end of the dirt road a mile from the ocean. Eventually, the virus would worm its stealthy way into the lives of almost everyone on this planet, bringing devastation and death and fear and disruption to millions. And eventually, for some—gratitude and appreciation and surprise reconfigurations of life. I wish I could write the sorrow and fear and joy of multitudes. I wish I could use my language to embrace a wider community of young and old, of rich and poor, of Black and Brown and Native Americans.

But I have only my story. And my story is the story of a well-enough-off old white woman, married to a well-enough-off old white man, living not just at the end of this dirt road, but at the end of our lives. 

We, the old, the ones who haven’t gotten sick and died from Covid, the ones who aren’t isolated in nursing homes, or very ill, have, in many ways, had it easy. We haven’t had to juggle working from home with parenting and educating a passel of children cooped up with us in small spaces.  We haven’t had to go back and live with our parents while our lives are disrupted, as many young people have had to do. Our own work lives haven’t been thrown into disarray because many of us don’t have a work life anymore.

My own work, reduced to a few days a week even before Covid slammed into the window, was surprisingly easy to move from inside an office to inside a screen. The contact I’ve had with patients this year has offered me a front row Pandemic Special view into the beautiful minds of my patients, leaving me less alone with my own mind.  And, while none of us old geezers have ever lived through a pandemic, most of us, by the time we reach the end of the journey, have lived through hard times and know that, eventually, everything turns. 

And we old ones are the lucky first group to get vaccines, the first to be allowed to go back out. Last Sunday, our two vaccine shots circulating in our immune systems like hot water in pipes on a cold day, Bob wakes early. I imagine we’ll spend the day the same way we’ve spent most of our days: at home, reading, taking walks. 

Instead, he takes me by complete surprise. “Let’s go to Rangeley and x/c ski for the day.”

“What!  Didn’t you read my blog this morning!  I’m not ready to open the door, to go out.  It’s not time yet.”

“Well,” he says, “I’ll go by myself if you don’t want to come.”

That does it. The idea of this eighty-two-years old man I love x/c skiing alone on the backcountry trails at the foot of Saddleback Mountain is so much more terrifying to me than my fear of walking out the door. And so, we pack up our decades-old x/c skis and poles, stash bottles of water and packages of nuts in one of Colin’s Anchorpak bags and walk out that front door. 

The drive there is filled with the ache and rumble of memories. For years we drove that route up 95 and across to Belgrade Lakes, then through Farmington and up Rt. 4 into the mountains, Colin and Bridget, young, squabbling, stuffed into the back seat of various vehicles: a blue VW Vanagon, a green Saab.  I’d pack the car on Friday afternoon and we’d drive up to Rangeley after Bob got home from work.  We’d arrive in the pitch dark at the Shelter Institute designed cabin we built in the woods in Dallas Plantation, a half mile from Saddleback Lake. Inside the cabin, it was, literally, freezing.  We’d build a fire in the wood stove and crawl into bed as fast we could get under the down comforters.  When we woke in the mornings, it was warm and, no matter the weather, we’d drive up to the mountain where the kids were enrolled in a downhill racing program.  We’d ski all day and come home late afternoon, hungry and tired.  Sometimes, we’d have families over for dinner and a dip in the hot-tub which sat just outside on the front deck.

I miss all that.  I miss my young self that had the boundless energy it took to live that life. I miss my strong body. Bob’s strong body. I miss the assumption that there was endless time. I miss the people we knew then, some of whom have died, gotten divorced, disappeared. When you get old and return to places that hold your young self, it’s hard not to look for her, wish for her, mourn her passing.    

When we arrive at the Rangeley Lakes X/C Center, a yurt a mile or so from the downhill trails at Saddleback Mountain, the parking lot isn’t full.  But the day has turned from dull overcast-gray to spectacular blue and white and green.  The sun is bursting, the sky is clear, and the temperature is a perfect thirty degrees. I am so grateful to be here, grateful that Bob lured me out the front door.

We put on our skis and stand at the top of the trailhead. The wide trail ahead of us, called the Tote Road, is groomed for both Nordic and skate skiing. It isn’t crowded. There is a man with a harness around his waist which is attached to a sled which holds a very frightened looking child. There are two young, hearty men in their twenties, there is a couple in their early fifties.  But there is no one who looks like Bob and me. No one with snow white hair and rivers of wrinkles, no one a little bent over. 

And there is no one skiing in the parallel Nordic track.  Instead, everyone is skate skiing.  Everyone but we two old codgers, shuffling along inside the confines of the track—and the confines of age. I watch a couple in their forties skate ski up the long hill in front of us.  They look fierce and determined. They barely look at us as they fly by. Their arms are out in front of them and working together with their feet in some way that completely confounds my spatial intelligence.  When they are out of sight and I am sure no one else is looking, I step out of the Nordic track and push my skis out in a V ahead of me.  I like the feeling of gliding, like the sense of freedom.  But still, I have no idea what to do with my arms.  I make a note to ask Colin to teach me how to do this.  I hope we won’t cross paths with anymore skate skiers who will, I imagine, look at us with a sense of bemusement and a little shadenfreude, as I once looked at the old people shuffling at half speed on outmoded equipment along these same trails. 

The trail takes us to the lip of Saddleback Lake, and I ski out onto its frozen surface and remember when I watched a moose swim across this lake and amble up onto the beach at Saddleback Lake Lodge. I remember what it was like before I learned about the harm I caused when our wood burning released carbon into the atmosphere, as did our our drive to the mountain, the clearing of the trees to build our cabin.  I remember when I didn’t worry about this wilderness, about what doom the moose and the loons and the bees and the trees face.  All of that innocence lost now.

Sometimes, I am glad for the short future of my old life.  I don’t want to live through, to bear the terrible grief of what I fear a too-carbon-rich future promises this planet. A future which no miracle vaccine will cure.

Bob takes my picture as I stand on the crust of frozen snow that covers the lake with the mountain behind me. We send it to the children, the big ones and the little ones.  “Look! We made it here!  Remember this spot?”

When there’s only a little time left everything is more precious, every blue sky bluer, every ski through forest on the side of a mountain with my old love more tender, more wondrous. 

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P.S. If you haven’t already read it, there is some wonderful writing submitted last week by readers on the topic of what to save of the pandemic life. To read old posts, click on my name at the top of this blog and you will see all the other blogs show up. And if you haven’t written something, but would like to, there’s still time to post.