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 One Hundred Seventy Five

After a cloudy, rainy and chilly day the sky cleared as night fell, the temperature dropping with it. I covered my tomatoes and other frost sensitive plants with a tarp to keep the cold away. This morning, walking with my love to her tower, I could almost see my breath clouding before me.

As we made our way down the quiet, subdued streets we saw a man approaching in the distance, walking with swinging hips. He began to somersault on the dewy grass as we came near, his expression exultant with a tinge of madness. His dark hair, which went down past his ears, flew up with each tumble, before settling back on his head as he rose up. We turned a corner and went on, while he climbed atop an electrical box, crouching down on his hands and knees looking up as though he were searching for a moon to howl at.

I returned home and removed the covers from the plants, all of which had survived the frost untouched. As I returned inside I saw a crow out the window flying parallel with where I stood, floating upon the air. I watched as it coasted along, momentarily entranced by the grace of its stillness in movement.

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 One Hundred Seventy Four

Yesterday was as hot as a September day can be, the sun bright and the sky cloudless. My love and I spent the day wandering about the markets, collecting the bounty of the season. Peaches, nectarines, and apples. Green beans, potatoes, corn and beets. The fruit and the beans we will freeze, hoping to steal some of the season’s freshness and vitality to warm ourselves on a winter’s day.

Today fall has arrived, the temperature plunging over twenty degrees from yesterday’s high. One could say without warning, except for the fact that the evenings and mornings have been growing cooler and cooler these past weeks. The day was overcast, miserable looking, and finally, after what seemed hours of procrastination, this evening the sky opened and rain fell.

It is the first moisture in over a month and so welcome. In fact there is a fire in the mountains to the west that the cold and rain will help to quench. August was so hot and dry that the leaves on the trees outside our house are turning brown. Soon they will be falling. We do not get magnificent autumns of golden and red leaves. Instead the leaves will brown from drought, and those that do not will turn in a matter of days. One day green, the next a dull yellow, before falling unceremoniously to the ground.

There will be plenty of warm days still to come. In a day or two the weather will turn and it may feel like summer again. My tomatoes and herbs and greens all still grow. But today still feels like an announcement rather than a foreshadowing. The seasons are turning now and there is no holding them back. 

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 One Hundred Seventy Three

You took everything from me. Everything.

A scream in the distance, hoarse and broken, carried by the wind. Clenched fists and veins bulging from the neck. Trembling hands and shaking knees. Tears form and dry before they can fall. Stalking off to nowhere, eyes empty, unseeing.

You took it all. You took it all.

They come to the valley of the dead, kings and queens, trains of retainers following behind. The merchants’ satchels have hidden compartments where they have secreted jewels and spices. But nothing shall pass beyond, except the wind.

How could you? How could you?

There was a time, long ago, when they came as conquerors, proselytizing as they went. They were clamorous and assured, with proper methods and learnings they were certain to apply. The land broke them, turned them aside, left them as little more than dust and despair. Names collected in unread books.

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 One Hundred Sixty Nine

She stands in the middle of the sidewalk casting her eyes about uncertainly. Two men sit under the shade of a tree near shopping carts piled high with blankets and clothes, bags filled with bottles and other odds and ends that collect around a life. They are staring into the half distance, paying no attention to her, though she is trying to meet their eyes.

Pushing past her hesitation she approaches the men, eyes downcast, saying something to them in a voice so low they can barely hear it. They send her away with a curt dismissal. She hurries down the street, her face impassive, her eyes searching.

At a glance she looks like any other young woman on her way to meet up with friends or a date. She is wearing a pretty white dress with a flower pattern checked across it. Her hair is pulled back, framing her dark and solemn eyes, which have a restlessness to them, only apparent upon closer inspection. She is one of Those Who Went Away, living a different kind of exile in this place than the starving one her ancestors were forced into.

Moving quickly, she cuts through a back alley, heading to a nearby park. There is a medical centre nearby and the ones she is looking for often congregate there. As she comes out of the alley she walks by the steps of the church. Two women, about her age, sit on the steps under the glare of the sun. One of them is unwrapping some foil, checking what is within, a happy smile on her face, while the other stares out with an unreadable expression, lips tight and angry.

She pauses before these women, hesitating again. For a second it looks as though she is going to approach them, but something changes her mind, a shadow crossing her face, and she moves on. The two women don’t notice her passing at all.

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 One Hundred Sixty Eight

There are magpies cackling from the trees clustered around the slough, leering down at passersby. Those are few and far between, but anytime one appears – be it coyote, antelope or human – the magpies feel compelled to pronounce their disdain.

There are two passersby just now, youth following the trail down to the spring. It is nestled in amongst the cottonwood trees and hummocks, flowing enough to fill a low slough in springtime. It is fall now and the ground is dry, except around the spring. They crouch where the water gurgles from the earth, a steady, cool flow arising from somewhere beneath them, and fill their canteens. They linger for a time in the shade of the trees, drinking the water and filling the canteens again. It has been a long day and they have far to go. The magpies chatter at them, but soon enough grow bored as they get no reaction.

As they set off the sun is already in the west, though it remains high above. They walk for the few hours of light that remain, eating the sandwiches Hazel Wheeler made for them earlier and drinking their water. The morning and the days before they had spent at the Wheeler place helping with the threshing and harvest. After lunch they’d declined the offer of another night in the loft, saying they would make their way home, though it would mean a night out on the land.

When the dusk begins to grow heavy they elect to stop, taking shelter in an old grain bin, the only trace of a farmstead that once was there. The house and all the rest were sold and moved a few years ago. Only the bin, a broken thing with no roof remains. They decide it is as good a place as any to pass the night. The floor will keep them off the ground and the walls are still solid enough to keep out the wind.

The grass is tall around the bin and they cut some of it to lay on the floorboards to make a sort of bed. They lie down, looking up at the darkening sky and watching as the milky way appears above, talking of nothing at all until they both drift off to sleep.

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 One Hundred Sixty Seven

The emptiness of the place is the first thing people notice in the Lost Quarter. The vastness with nothing to fill it. The grass, the odd tree, short and bent by the wind, and the birds darting about, low to the ground and then high, all register later. It is the sky that leaves them overwhelmed and a little frightened. More towering than any mountain and unending. Any direction they turn it goes on and on, never quite stopping.

Standing in the midst of it one can truly feel alone and tiny in the face of the universe. Utterly insignificant, in a way that you never do in a mountain range. Their grandeur is oddly comforting, inspiring thoughts of great deeds and impossible feats. A worthy adversary in every way. One can make a mark, leave a trace upon this life, equal to the mountains on this world, is the belief that comes from standing amongst them. They are a challenge to be met in some way, through conquest or contemplation.

The prairie sky is more implacable than any mountain. Nothing is obscured there and there is nowhere to hide. There is only you crouching before its vastness, understanding, as you never will anywhere else, that you are speck of insignificance in the face of the universe. All that you do will leave no mark that the wind cannot wear away.

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 One Hundred Sixty Five

The northern edge of the Lost Quarter is marked by a wandering river. It has always been a border of sorts, going back to the time of the Iron and Blackfoot Confederacies, the great nations of Those Who Went Away. Before their cruel exile the river was contested territory between them.

Borders are always porous things and the borders of the Lost Quarter are no different. Always shifting and moving, impossible to define, though people always attempt to do so. A line drawn on a map, a fence or a wall constructed, an idea imposed. These things hold only so long as people choose to let them. The greater dominions and other realms, both near and far, exist only insofar as people choose to believe in them.

The Quarter itself is no different. It exists, as a place, in the minds of those who live there, those who have passed through and gone on, Those Who Went Away and Those Who Came. If it is forgotten it will dwindle away, absorbed by the greater dominions, and become a place like any other. Already many of the ways in and out of the Quarter are forgotten and lost, and time will tell what will happen to the place itself.

The river is a true border in one sense. It has always marked the edge of the great rolling plains that stretch through the Quarter and south, west and east. North is forested land and life has always been different there.

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 One Hundred Sixty Two

It occurs to me that it has been some time since I wrote about the dread lord and really gave consideration to his continued presence in the Lost Quarter. That is not because his depredations have ceased or that I, or anyone really, has lowered their guard against him. It is just that those measures have become matter of fact, barely noticed, like slipping on shoes before going outside.

Of course autumn nears, as the chill that greets us each morning reminds, and with it will come schools reopening and a return to the indoors. I imagine we will all become hardier sitting upon patios and park benches as temperatures drop, but even the toughest among us will have to draw the line when the snow comes and winter with it.

What will happen then, when we can no longer wander outdoors as a distraction and a relief? Perhaps we as members of this great wintry dominion will embrace the cold as never before. We will spend time outside and find that it isn’t really so bad. Though on those days when the temperature plummets near forty below, one can hardly linger.

Secluding ourselves will only last for so long, especially in those darkest months of winter. And so we will gather and mingle indoors, perhaps not in quite the numbers we did before, but still enough that the grippe reborn will find his way among us. If things go badly we will be back to where we started, trapped in our homes, waiting to see if the dread lord can slip through our defences.

It is exhausting to think about, as everything seems to be these days. And so instead we try to enjoy these last days of summer as best we can.