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 Four Hundred Seventy Six

A momentous week off as both my love and I have now received our second inoculations. By mid-July we will fully protected, as protected as one can be, against the grippe reborn. I felt little of the excitement I had for the first dose, the whole experience now mundane. The inoculation site remained a marvel of efficiency, smiling volunteers and nurses guiding hundreds of people through lines to receive their doses. I suffered again from side effects, but even they were more muted, leaving me with a day of mild misery.

The week was momentous for another reason, as a heat wave reached these parts, lasting the better part of eight days. At its peak the temperatures reached 36 for multiple days, as hot as it ever gets here. Worse, because it was day after day of unrelenting heat, the nights offered no relief. Being so close to the mountains the temperatures usually drop down to 10-15 on even the hottest nights, but on this week we saw lows of 20. The air was stifling and didn’t seem to move.

The oddest part was the sky. Here I am used to cloudless days, the sun bright, the sky vast and blue, but this was something else entirely. There was not a cloud to be seen for days. The blue of the sky was different, a subdued blue, tinged by all the pollution from the city and its environs that had nowhere to go. It simply lingered in the air, building and building, just like heat. It was like the world had gone still, the weather, the sky, everything the same day after day. The wind, when it did blow, was warm and unpleasant, a desert wind, leeching any moisture from the air, offering no relief.

We are not used to this kind of heat in these parts, certainly not for that length of time. Usually we have a day or two, at most, before a thunderstorm intrudes and brings cool air in its wake. I found the whole experience miserable, the nights restless as I struggled to sleep. Being outside, for any length of time was a chore and we sought out air conditioned places as much as possible, venturing to a mall for the first time since the grippe reborn arrived in these parts. The birds, which normally populate the trees out front of our home were absent most of the week, heading to the river where there is water.

The heat broke with a tremendous storm. There was thunder and lightning, torrential rains and even hail. The thunderhead stood over the centre of the city, vast and swirling, looking as though it might transform itself into a funnel cloud and perhaps even a tornado. It did not, but it still left a path of destruction in its wake. Streets were flooded and underground parkades on those streets as well. In our building the roof leaked and I spent the night trying to reduce the pools of water to limit the damage. It was cool in the darkness as we frantically filled a wet vac again and again, emptying its contents down a drain. The night air smelled glorious, of wet earth and damp greenery.

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 Four Hundred Sixty Three

My love and I went for a walk to the great hill that looms over the north of the city, a vast parkway. With travel still circumscribed by the quarantine protocols here and elsewhere we have decided to make a project this summer of visiting various parks throughout the city, ones that we do not usually frequent. From its summit you can see the whole of the city and beyond sprawling out. Even on a cloudy, gloomy morning, as it was when we ventured there, we could see the mountains to the west and the prairie stretching in every other direction. To the east, beyond where our eyes could see, lay the Quarter, the roads there obscured by the clouds on the horizon.

The hill is so large it has its own hills and valleys that one discovers while wandering. The landscape changes as you go, one moment wide open grassland and then next descending into a forested valley. It is the place where the prairie meets the foothills, a battleground that neither ceded and both retain. To me though, the smell is of the Quarter. There is wolf willow and wild sage, buckbrush and wild roses, all combining to create that distinct smell that is the prairies for me.

We passed through a glen, a place where it looked like water might once have flowed long ago. Trees flourished on either side of the pathway, though the grass did not. It was dry with none of the profusion of brush and flowers we had earlier gone by. Two crows stood in trees on either side of the pathway calling out to each other, low and croaking.

We came from there to a small basin where the runoff from the winter gathered in a pond. It is dry now, though the ground is still soft. There were dead limbs of trees and other branches cast about like detritus from some retreating sea. One of the crows followed us, watchful from a tree, its eerie call silencing all the other birds. I looked up at where it perched in the tree, making eye contact with it briefly, before it took off, heading east toward the Quarter.

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 Four Hundred Fifty Five

We are truly in summer now, the days warm and the evenings pleasant. It has been as hot a June as I can recall with several days in the thirties. With the lifting of some of the quarantine restrictions, restaurants with their patios are now fully open and people are flocking to them. It is wonderful to see people gathering, smiling faces and laughter.

The retreat of the grippe reborn continues in these parts. Each day brings dwindling numbers, even with the relaxation of the protocols. It is proof, as if we needed more having seen what has happened elsewhere, that the inoculations work. I am due to receive my second before the end of the month. Hopefully my love will be able to as well. It seems most everyone who wants them should be able to have their doses by the end of July.

But therein lies the problem. Those seeking out their first doses have dwindled as well. We are stalled just below the seventy percent mark that the government has set for ending restrictions. They have grown desperate to encourage more people to take up the doses, launching a lottery and trying to reach out to those communities where the uptake has been slow. With the shrinking footprints of the dread lord many must feel that there is no rush, that the risk without is minimal. And for now that may be true, but in the fall as flu season returns the dread lord will as well, perhaps armed with new and seductive powers.

There is no convincing some people though. No matter how many millions receive their doses, with few showing any ill effects, no matter how much the dread lord is thwarted by those who have received it, there will still be those who claim the inoculations don’t work. They talk of it as being an experimental treatment, as if every treatment we receive from doctors, every drug from every pharmacy wasn’t based on experiments and trials. They dismiss the dread lord’s power and say there is no need to protect themselves against him, forgetting all those who do not have any defences.

It would be one thing if they simply declined to have their doses, but they feel the need to always loudly insist upon the righteousness of their refusal and to verbally assault those of us who make another choice. They demand a choice for themselves, which they have, but that isn’t enough for them. They loudly scream against anyone who feels differently and it is evident if they had their way none of us would receive an inoculation. They are the same loud, vain, fools who have spent the last year crying out against the quarantine protocols, preferring to pretend that the dread lord isn’t real. Life would be much easier if the things we can’t control were all illusions. What will happen when they are ended, I wonder, where will their anger take them?

As I write this my parents send word they at the inoculation site awaiting their second dose. Day by day there will be more. It really does feel as though we are approaching the end this time, though, of course, the war against the dread lord will never be won entirely.

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 Four Hundred Fifty

The rivers are swollen, lapping up on the banks, threatening to overflow as the current races by. My love and I were in the mountains several weeks ago and the higher reaches were still heavy with snow, the peaks gleaming white in the sun. The water was trickling down from everywhere, the long, slow release of winter’s grip. Our last night it rained for hours, what seemed a passing storm getting caught among the summits and settling in to empty its cargo. Overnight the rain turned to snow and we awoke to a white world. That is life in the mountains. Pack for four seasons when you go, as you will experience all of them, and certainly we did. 

My love and I went for a walk along one of the city’s rivers last weekend, a return to our habits of the previous year when we were still acclimatizing ourselves to life with the grippe reborn. All those new practices have become routine now. It is hard to recall a time when we didn’t have masks at the ready or to ask each other whether we felt comfortable sitting on this patio or entering this place that before we would have wandered into without a thought. An anxious existence, though that anxiety has faded to a dull ebb that exists mostly in the background, cropping up only every now and again to paralyze us.

There are two rivers that wander through the city, each distinct in character. One is narrow and winding with a lazy current, the other broader, but still shallow, always moving at a quick pace. This time of year, with the spring melt, they are transformed, unrecognizable, much of their banks underwater and their currents a loud torrent. If there is to be flooding now is the time when it will happen, June bringing both rain and melting snow in the western mountains, the source of both waterways.

The last year feels like we have spent all our days with a swollen current, eroding the banks we had established to keep it at bay. Before a little upsurge from dark and stormy days would hardly be noticed, but now, even the smallest shower can send the waters spilling over the banks, wearing them away. There was a great flood in this city nearly a decade ago now, the two rivers overflowing their banks everywhere, swallowing up whole streets and neighbourhoods, leaving devastation in its wake. We have spent the years since restoring all that was ruined and building new banks and berms to help stop that from happening again. It is a long, slow process. We will all have to do something of the same kind of work ourselves as our lives begin to return to what they were before the dread lord stalked these lands.

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 Four Hundred Forty Two

What a change two weeks has brought us. The tide that threatened to overwhelm us has at last begun to recede as the grippe reborn slowly loses his hold on these parts. The speed of the drop in those afflicted has been as startling as the rise and must surely be the result of the inoculation campaign which has picked up pace in the last weeks. It is heartening to see the effectiveness of the inoculations play out in real time.

Restrictions are now being lifted. Across the Dominions the story is the same. Numbers are falling precipitously and plans for a return to normalcy are being announced. In these parts the plans are aggressive, with an end to all quarantine restrictions called for by the end of June. We are, again, out of step with the rest of the Dominions, who are much more conservative in their proposed plans. It looks even more odd when one considers we were the last to see the tide of the dread lord begin to retreat.

Of course, given the events of the past month it is no surprise. The government is being torn apart by the debate over the necessity of the restrictions and the premier desperately needs some kind of win to save his leadership. A cautious approach would probably be better. Far better to be able to move up relaxation of the quarantine protocols than to move too quickly and be forced into retreat yet again. But that seems to be this government’s preferred mode of operation.

Despite all that, it feels as though a weight has begun to be lifted from our lives with the falling cases. I will still be cautious, regardless of whether the restrictions remain in place, at least until I have my second dose. How can one not remain cautious after all that has happened the last year? It is hard to allow myself to hope after all the times I have done so and it has been thwarted. Instead I shall wait and see what comes, giving in to neither hope nor despair.

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 Four Hundred Twenty Eight

I have been largely forgiving of our politicians during the struggle with the grippe reborn. They have been thrust into a situation they had not anticipated, and while one could blame them for that failure of imagination, it is abundantly clear that it is a failure shared across the world. We have known forever that the dread lord might rise again, have instituted plans and policies for just such an eventuality, and yet so many government’s, ours included, seemed to be utterly paralyzed at his appearance.

The various mistakes made in those early days, some from ignorance of the nature of the dread lord’s power, some from a bizarre inaction and almost an unwillingness to believe that this was happening, allowed him entrée into these parts and so many others. And here he has stayed, embedding himself deep in the fabric of things. All these early failures have meant that we have been unable to stamp out the dread lord’s forces in any meaningful way, which has meant our governments have found themselves vacillating between strict quarantine protocols and trying to allow some semblance of normal life.

Every government in the Dominions has made the same mistake at one point or another in the past year, thinking they had things under control, but in fact allowing the dread lord to march unopposed through the populace. Our leaders in these parts have the distinction of having twice allowed things to get so out of control that they nearly ran out of hospital beds and medical supplies. Once I suppose is explicable, but to allow the exact same thing to happen again a few months later, despite having seen the earlier consequences is unconscionable.

Yet it is not surprising, especially given the events of the past week. There is a significant minority, perhaps even a majority, of the governing party who claim there is no need for any quarantine protocols, who declare that the dread lord is of little concern. Many are representatives of rural ridings in these parts and they claim the dread lord is a scourge of cities only and that the rules are too onerous and unfair. It explains the great reluctance of the leadership of the party to enact stricter measures sooner when they might have saved more lives.

The tensions within the government caucus, which have been repeatedly publically stoked by recalcitrant representatives, exploded last week with one representative writing a letter demanding the resignation of the premier for his various failures. That such disputes should be taking place, while we all endure another round of restrictions and fear at the growing power of the dread lord, explains everything about the government’s response to the pandemic over these last months. For many, it is not their main focus. They have other priorities than defeating the dread lord, and we are living in the results of that. I can only hope that no one forgets by the time we come to vote again, for our leaders have amply demonstrated they are ill-suited to governing in any kind of emergency.

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 Four Hundred Twenty Two

My love has received her inoculation, truly a momentous day. In some ways I was happier for this moment than I was to receive my own. This to me signals the beginning of the end of this long battle with the grippe reborn. I know it will linger on into the coming years, but it will soon be a different sort of struggle and for that I am thankful. All of this took much longer than I had hoped for, and there is still so much work to be done, not only in these parts but across the world, yet I feel a weight has been lifted from me. A burden that we had to carry will soon be gone.

In the evening we went out and sat in park with a couple of friends, having drinks and enjoying the sunshine. It was the first time we have done something like that in a month or two and it felt like a new beginning.

I look forward in the weeks to come, as the tide that the dread lord has brought forth is slowly rolled back, to going out again and seeing more of friends, having a beer on a patio, and all the rest of those things we have been denying ourselves. Maybe later this year we can travel and see something of the greater Dominions. At the very least we can allow ourselves some measure of hope again.

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 Four Hundred Twenty One

Restless and unable to sleep these last nights. It is like I have forgotten how to drift off and I spend the darkened hours in bed trying and failing to do what should come without a thought. I almost dread sleep now; it holds no promise of rejuvenation, just anguish. Here, after more than a year with the dread lord grippe, it feels as though I am becoming untethered, just as the end of our struggles comes into sight. I have received my inoculation, and my love will receive hers soon as well. Yet I can find none of the peace I thought this moment would bring.

In part it is the inoculation I received, which has vanishingly rare but potentially deadly side effects. I knew about these beforehand, but was unconcerned. With the dread lord only gaining in power in these parts, there was clearly much more risk to me from him than from whatever might befall me from the inoculation. And there was not just me to think about. There is my love, who would undoubtedly be infected if I were to be, and any others who life chanced to send my way. The choice was clear.

My reaction to the dose was so powerful that I began to doubt that logic, even as I knew it to still be correct. The news in these parts did little to provide confidence. There were cases of the rare side effect (but of course there would be when millions of doses were given) and experts who advised against using the inoculation and experts who disagreed with them. It was exhausting in all the ways this past year has been exhausting. A cacophony of noise which you wish you could ignore but somehow cannot, a blanket of fog that leaves you turning this way and that wondering what direction to go.

I have turned away from the news and all the various mediums that extract so much time from our lives. Over the last year I have consumed it all voraciously, reading story after story about the dread lord, checking updates of numbers of those afflicted by his powers, and now updates of those who have been inoculated against him. It felt important to bear witness to our collective struggle; it was the least I could do so far from the front lines of that battle. And it was a comfort too, knowing others were enduring as we were enduring.

But it is a comfort no longer. This morning I went for a bike ride, following one river to where it met another, a great confluence at the centre of the city. I looked out upon that ancient meeting place where Those Who Went Away and many others gathered over the centuries, the water glimmering under the rising sun, the light as only it can be in these parts. I felt a sense of peace knowing that I was standing where so many others had looked out upon these same waters under this same light. Today, I said to myself, is going to be a good day.

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 Four Hundred Twenty

I dreamed while still awake, or perhaps I drifted off for a few minutes, though I do not think so. Sleep has been precious these last days, hard to come by. In the dream I had returned to the central parts of the Quarter. There were the rolling hills, the vast blue sky and the endless horizon that I know so well. The prairie extended in every direction I looked. There were no roads, no homesteads, no markers. I walked for what seemed like hours but encountered nothing and no one. The birds and insects flitting about, and the wind that carried them, provided the only sounds I heard.

It seemed I was seeing the Quarter as it once was, or perhaps as it will be again someday. I walked until I came to a small valley where some chokecherry trees grew, their branches heavy with unripe berries. There was a spring there, hidden amongst the bushes and I cupped a few handfuls of water to my lips. It was cool, a revelation. I sat in the shade of the trees for a time.

When I emerged from the valley the light in the sky had changed. It was a faded kind of blue as if something had been drained from it. There was something on the horizon, massive and dark. Metallic. It was hard to tell whether it was moving on the ground or in the air it so filled up that part of the sky. All I could be certain of was that it was approaching, growing larger and larger.

I blinked and it was gone and though I stared at the horizon trying to find some trace of its presence I found myself alone again. The birds had gone quiet, only the grasshoppers whirred on oblivious. The wind shifted direction and began to blow. 

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 Four Hundred Thirteen

May and the days gradually grow warmer. It has been a dry spring, aside from a few days of snow flurries, and the air is thick with pollen and dust. My throat is raw and my nose stuffed. I would fear that the dread lord has visited me except this happens every year. Still I linger inside, my own personal quarantine, as others race to enjoy the weather we have all been waiting for all winter, while I long for some rain to clear out the dust and pollen.

The news only grows worse in our battle against the grippe reborn. After spending much of the last year far from any main engagements we now find the Quarter on the front lines of the battle. More and more fall each day at a terrifying rate. To this point our hospitals have managed to care for all the afflicted and the loss of life has been minimal, no doubt thanks to the inoculation campaign that is slowly picking up pace. But for how long can we hold the line when the numbers continue to grow?

There were those, and our government leaders seemed to be among them, who felt the dread lord would go into a kind of hibernation as spring came. He did last year after all. That and the inoculation campaign would hold him at bay. Further restrictions were thus unnecessary. But just as we have learned so much about the nature of his powers, so he has learned how to evade our controls. And so we are faced with a tsunami our leaders could not conceive of and which they have no answers for. Worse they have spent the past months downplaying the effectiveness of quarantine restrictions and then imposing new ones despite that in a kind of tortured dance. People in the Quarter no longer know what to do and have stopped paying attention, deciding to just proceed as though the grippe reborn has been vanquished.

I have been saying for weeks now that better days are ahead and I still believe that. Having just received my inoculation, how can I doubt it? But it gets harder and harder each day to find hope in this. We see other places where the dread lord has been beaten back, whether by inoculation or quarantine protocols, and wonder bitterly why that can’t be us. It could have been, we think, but we have been led astray by those who lead us, who seem to have shrunk in the face of this moment. Finding the strength to endure another month, maybe more, of this seems almost impossible. I do not feel despair or anguish, just a cold fury that, a year into our battle with the dread lord, those who rule us could have failed so badly. Last night they announced strict new protocols to stem the tide, the only choice now that things have gotten beyond their control. And so we will spend this May as we did last May leading shadowed half-lives, wondering again when all this might end.