Discovering the backyard and following the same running route aren’t bad ways to wait out a pandemic

I thrive on big change.

Not little change. I am fastidious about tracking my belongings. I use my things until they are unusable. I’ve had the same backpack since I was a teenager, the same pair of Crocs for more than 10 years, Carhartts for longer, and I can tell you exactly where my socks live in the dresser drawer.

I’m aware of stuff down to the minutiae and I like it that way because it’s less of my real-life energy wasted on hunting down duct tape or scissors. I know where those things live.

But boy, nothing gets me excited like a major life event. A big, bold move. A career change. An audacious goal. My track record in life demonstrates that I thrive on what many have called “brave” moves, but ones I would argue are only brave in retrospect where I realize exactly how much was at risk. (So, from that perspective, you could also call them stupid moves. I identified with the character Roman in the TV show Succession when he said, “I’m dumb, but I’m smart.”)

I thrust myself into the heart of New York City for college with barely a soul I knew in the city. If you were within sobbing distance of the East Village circa 2004, that was me on the phone with my parents.

I moved to Reno, Nevada, for true love, ditching my exciting job and car back in Alaska to work on an urban farm in exchange for free room and board. A vintage loaner bicycle was my primary mode of transportation my first six months there. I do not have a green thumb, but luckily the relationship part worked out.

Recently, I made a big career change. I’d been working with the same organization for five years doing work I loved with people I loved, but I got tired of the entrenched workplace structure and dynamics. I quit for a less stable job where I’ve learned and grown more in the last eight months than I ever could have predicted.

“Learning” and “growing” are sanitized words when printed. In real life, learning often feels uncomfortable and scary, but in the aggregate I can feel myself expanding. I have wind in my sails.

So, you’d think a global pandemic qualifies as a major life event, therefore I should be thriving. Right?

I’m sitting here trying to figure that one out.

I’m actually sitting here in Alaska, in my neighborhood, in my home. I’m not going anywhere for a long time.

Throughout my life, with all the big changes I’ve made, I’ve wondered what it would feel like to stay put somewhere long enough to really put down roots. Even though I thrive on breezing through and around, making true connections as I go, sure, but also never staying any one place for too long, I’ve wondered what would it feel like to be one of those people who instead of growing out, grows in and down.

I’ve shaken my fist at the sky for this golden opportunity to try just that. Yes, the global pandemic is about more than just me (understatement of the century), but here I am trying to find my way within it.

And my way doesn’t take me to the grocery store anymore, much less the airport. As a person vulnerable to COVID-19, I am highly risk-averse right now and likely will be until there’s a vaccine.

There’s not much external change in my life at all. I’m getting a real-time crash course in staying put, until I don’t know when.

So, what does staying put look like for me?

Like many other Alaskans I’ve discovered my backyard. I’m one of the people showing up (masked, and grateful for the safety policy in place) at my local nursery, helping them sell out of flowers and veggie starts.

My husband and I are installing a fence to keep the moose out, using locally sourced spruce fence posts he found on Craigslist and Home Depot-pickup hog fence.

Since I’m not going inside stores, we’ve also gotten creative about planters. The pallets strewn around our yard and filled with flowers are on brand both for our neighborhood in Butte and Pinterest.

I’m also doing what feels like running in place. It’s not actually in one place, but I have slightly different spins on the same route I run weekly.

The routine doesn’t feel boring right now. It actually feels comforting. Amid all of the uncertainty and angst, amid all of the trying logistics around getting my stepdaughter up here for the summer (a plan that involves a multi-car shuttle pickup at the airport and a 14-day quarantine in a cute cabin down the street from us) and amid the mental gymnastics at work and with friends and family, it’s soothing to not have to make a decision around where and how far to run. I just go, breathe, and take in the view.

It’s the Alaska outdoors version of getting on a treadmill, and while I can’t say I love it, I need it.

For me, the great slow-down-and-stay-put is in another form of change. I’ve traveled enough for several lifetimes over the last several years. I’ve always wanted the opportunity to try and go deeper in one place.

I never imagined a pandemic would be the thing that flicked the switch. I would send the novel coronavirus back into nonexistence if I had the option. But since it’s here, and so am I, I am adjusting. That’s what I do. And I can’t imagine a better place to be forced to learn how to stay put than Alaska.

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