Disaster living

Happy place

"Oh, 2020," the Internet moans, "What else do you have in store for us?" Writing from California--blanketed by smoke, with more fire-starting thunderstorms on the way--and facing a third of the year still to come, it is hard to keep a brave face. And more bad news: the epic Trumpfoolery aside, 2020 will be followed by worse years still. The hallmark of climate change is concurrent disasters, after all.

Pandemic living is not the new forever, but we have to accept that disaster living is. I do not expect ever again to enjoy long periods in which the world around me seems calm and well-adjusted. But I do want my internal world to be calm and well-adjusted just as often as it can be. That's going to take work and preparation. Some things I tell myself:

• Focus on making progress, not on being done. Because we are--I'll write about the Barn, soon--but will never be.
• Meet uncertainty with diversity. You can't prepare for everything, but if you're well prepared for at least a few scenarios--fire, flood, earthquakes--then when something new (a pandemic, say) takes you by surprise you'll probably have at least a few N95s on hand.
• Put yourself out there. Not literally--stay at home, except maybe if you're going camping--but visualize the world you no longer encounter. Those friends are still there, those places are still there, those problems are still there, and there are still ways to interact with and to help all of them.
  
•  Give and ask. Friends of ours, aware of our lack of air conditioning and of the situation outside our window...
  

...let us borrow not just one but two air purifiers. Saved the day (or possibly the week), and reinforced existing mutuality. We are none of us going to get through this alone, nor will we have to.

Chicken Karma

Two chickens, two eggs!

I mentioned in passing that we now have chickens. Busy creatures, and mostly quiet now that we "took care of" the one rooster among them, the two birds keep to themselves, but always with a sharp eye out for new spaces to explore. This gives the lie to those who claim that even when provided outside space chickens prefer to remain in their coops--please, spend extra for properly pastured eggs! It can also lead to problems, and last week it did: while we were away camping, someone left the gate to the creek open and one of our two birds flew the coop, or, more likely, just walked out. The creek, a wildlife corridor, is frequented by a variety of hungry predators: a chicken wandering down there is not likely to last long. And so, having received the news by text, we mourned its passing.

But the creek is a funny place and often turns up surprises. I recall, a couple of years back, one such surprise: we discovered a little girl, four-year-old Lulu, wandering alone in the creek. A hot day, Lulu was wearing a pink puffy jacket and holding a whistle, which she was blowing as she went. We never found out why she had on a puffy jacket, but the whistle showed some foresight on the part of her parents, as did the tag with a phone number we discovered once we lured her out with some watermelon. Lulu, unaware she was lost, was soon returned to her grateful parents.

Lulu was in the creek that day because Lulu loves the creek, a fact her parents accommodated. And apparently Lulu still loves the creek, and is still often to be found there. So no surprise that it was Lulu who found our wandering chicken in the creek and brought her home, Lulu having, in the intervening years, learned to return home on her own. The find kicked off a good deal of local chatter as chicken owners up and down the creek were contacted, and, eventually, us among them. So we found Lulu, and Lulu found our chicken. Fairfax, again, provides, as a good village should.