Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Seventy Seven

The landscape of the Lost Quarter is deceptive. By all appearances it is a plain marked only by rolling hills, like waves rippling across a vast sea. In some parts it is said you can watch your dog run away for three days, and certainly it is flat in places. The horizon is daunting as a result, with seemingly no end to it; the closer you look, the farther it goes.  The sky dwarfs everything else, vast and blue, a reminder that we are but specks upon the earth.

There is a small rise on a road that winds its way through the Lost Quarter that I often think of. One hardly notices it as you pass along, particularly if one is proceeding north. It is not a great hill, one passes by others that are much steeper, whether going north or south. The land simply rises up and then levels off, as it does in a thousand other places.

Yet, if you pause at the top of the rise, facing south and look out upon the horizon your entire perspective will change. For at the edge of the horizon, miles away, there is another rise and everything else lies below. This innocuous little hill, unremarkable in every way, is not a hill at all, but edge of vast and unnoticed valley that contains much of the Lost Quarter. You would never know you were in a valley unless you stand just there and happen to look.