Social Distancing

Summer 2020. Deep in the pandemic. We were avoiding each other, “social distancing” it was called. For the introverts it was a gift. For extroverts, a slow torture. I hover somewhere between the two. I’ve got five children, three decades of marriage, and a day job built entirely on talking. I value time alone. 

I drove up high into the foothills one evening. Away from the news. Away from the fear. Just the green hills and the silence. Seeking whatever calm I could find.

I rarely shoot the foothills in color. But this green, the vibrant, almost impossible green of a wet spring finally giving way to summer, demanded it. Looking at it now, I feel that summer all over again. The isolation. The confusion. The strange mixture of hope and hopelessness that alternated daily.

Without that memory, this photo looks like a screensaver.