Day 25: Covid interruption and time for reflection

Last Wednesday a friend texted to say her husband had Covid. I’d been to dinner with them at the weekend and though I’d tested negative from a nose swab on the Monday I’d also developed a sore throat and tickly cough, so my sister, who’s a nurse, advised a throat swab and I promptly tested positive. To begin with I just coughed a lot and felt fuzzy and frustrated I couldn’t get outside. I live in Wales where rules are still to self-isolate at least 5 days, after which two negative tests 24 hours apart will release me. How can I pay attention to nature and look out for it when confined to my small flat?

 
On my first full day of confinement I’m gazing out the window watching the clouds moving fast across the sky. The wind has picked up and I think about putting on the washing machine for a clothes wash. This is one small change I’ve tried to integrate over the past year, since a friend recommended the website shouldibake.com. Set up by a team of researchers at UCL, it recommends baking only when at least a third of the UK electricity supply comes from renewables. I don’t bake very often, but I can afford to pick and choose when I put a wash on because I live alone, have no children and I’m a charity shop junkie with too many clothes. So I use it for that mostly, though I don’t always manage it. At some point in late summer or autumn last year there seemed to be endless weeks with no wind. Adapting some of my energy use to the weather makes me more conscious of both the promise and challenges that lie ahead. [As I posted this I realised the website wasn’t working, hopefully back soon, but here’s the twitter account in the meantime @baking4cast]

A few days into my isolation I felt so unwell I mostly slept or dozed and listened to the birds outside my window. This time of year I can hear sparrows chirping busily, gulls hollering to each other and a blackbird visible on the topmost branch of a tree across the road, fluting away in the early hours of the morning. I’ve even heard owls occasionally greeting each other at night. I feel lucky these are some of the main sounds of my neighbourhood, alongside intermittent cars, the odd drunken argument and sirens in the distance.

I get exhausted easily, so as I recover I’ve spent lots of time sitting and hazily reflecting on things. Illness, when I’m not in acute pain or too much misery leads me to overthinking and an uneasy sense of lazy impotence. Reflecting on this I acknowledge a similar pattern in my response to the problems of the world as I feel guilty, beat myself up mentally and then feel overwhelmed and powerless. This doesn’t help give courage to act, it’s more likely to make me depressed or bury my head in the sand. I’ve made small changes over the years, for example mostly following a vegan diet since 2010. Though more or less flexitarian in practice, I’m at the more veggie end of the Planetary Health Diet. That has sometimes been a challenge, especially in the early days, to confront people with my choices and face others’ discomfort. I’m always at pains to emphasise that I have no right to judge the choices of others, but that’s not always how it comes across. Yet there have also been signs that others are inspired by my actions too and it has become much easier in recent years as awareness is rising and people start to make connections between their own health and the health of both human and more-than-human others.

 
In fact, to finally share and take part in something like this in my workplace feels like a real sea change for me. Reading about other people’s challenges this month has been especially inspiring and motivating. As have colleague’s comments on my own. I’m now keen to do more to stretch myself to further minimise my own waste and consumption of unnecessary stuff. One step at a time. Feeling part of a broader effort and reframing my feelings of guilt into response-ability is a good start.

I’m still waiting for a negative test, but can be released regardless tomorrow on day 10. I’ve never missed having a garden quite so much as this past week! Once I started to feel better I spent an hour or so indoor gardening, potting cuttings and repotting plants. Just getting my hands stuck into (peat-free) compost and making a mess of my sink helped me feel so much better mentally. And those little cuttings which have been sitting in glasses of water most of the winter finally have something more substantial between their roots. I felt them breathing a sigh of relief.

The other evening I sighed with relief myself as I snuck out at dusk for a (now not so) secret solitary walk in the woods, feeling the earth at my feet, breathing in the darkening air and spring smell of vegetation and warmer soil. I could almost drink in the blackbirds’ and thrushes’ warning calls with my ears. The cool air greeted my skin, loosened my tired body. I rested lying back on a fallen tree for a while gazing at the branches silhouetted against the pinkish greying sky. I thought about the multitude of life inside the dead wood below me. I read somewhere this tree trunk will host more life now than it ever did when it was alive. This thought makes me feel suddenly hopeful. There is so much about this world we are still only just beginning to understand. I take that to mean there are also so many possibilities to become aware of, interact with and maybe change things for the better.