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 Five Hundred Eighty Three

The creek beds are dry now, spring runoff a distant memory. The grass long ago turned brown in the summer heat. He can see his breath in the air as he sets out in the morning. It is still dark out, only a hint of light on the eastern horizon. How did that happen, he wonders, it seems like only last week the sun was visible in the sky by the time he set out in the morning.

Habits. The things that make up a day. Up in the morning at dawn, or thereabouts, coffee and porridge for breakfast, and then about his day. The cattle are gone now, sold early in August with the drought eating up the pastures, so he has his days to himself. He walks in the morning up into the hills west of home, cutting across the dry creeks, climbing to the highest point where he can see the prairies spread out before him. His strides are long and purposeful always, forever hurrying on to his next task, though now there is no particular need to hurry.

After his walk is done he busies himself with this and that. Projects are a pleasure now, where before they were always something that had to be fit in between more urgent work. He builds fences and tends to the trees he’s planted to create a wind break around the yard. These parts there is always wind. It is never still. If there is nothing to do or the weather is poor he will sit inside and read a book. Before there were always things to be done, an urgency to every task, but now a lazy day can be allowed. Time is a luxury he can indulge.

Evenings he will sit with his wife, both of them reading or maybe playing a hand or two of cards. Crib usually. A long winter awaits. There will be no calving of cows, no going out at the dead of night in the brutal cold to check. He will walk in the hills until the snow is too deep to allow it. The days will be his own.