Things feel weird now, don't they? Our schedules have been disrupted, and the comfort that comes from routine—from knowing what comes next—is gone.
For me, work has always been a through line. Days at my nature center have been a (somewhat) predictable, thirty years’ worth of familiarity with the places, the programs, and the people that work has brought to my life. Now that’s all been shifted, and it feels disorienting.
Or at least it did, until I realized there’s another through line, an even more stable one, in nature. No matter what’s happening in the rest of the world, the juncos are still squabbling at my birdfeeder, the maples are budding out in their normal sequence, and the wood frogs are waking up as expected.
Almost all of it is right on schedule (except for the phoebe who hangs out on my front porch—he’s back early). This daily “business as usual” feels like a foundation that’s stable and safe, like protection from whatever uncertainty lies ahead.
I may not know what tomorrow’s numbers out of Italy or New York will look like, but I can set a mental clock on returning migrants and rousing hibernators, those that appear with such regularity I’d swear they’re consulting a calendar.
I hope you’re connecting with your own through line, whatever it might be. Whether you find it in the outdoors, in books, or in hobbies that soothe your hands and your mind, you too have a foundation, and it’s the perfect place to stand right now and gain perspective. Life goes on, every day, even today.
And when the dust settles into whatever a post-COVID world looks like, some things will have remained unchanged all along. You can count on it.
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