THE VAST OF DAY*

 

 

Time, time time.

I have to admit, the year is turning.  I experienced this fact one afternoon when the sky was bright blue, the sun almost blinding, and it didn't set until nearly 5 o’clock.  After a streak of dim cloudy days, this came as a huge surprise. To me, anyway. When, exactly, did this happen?  

 

No one–it's not just me–seem to have a good handle on exactly when anything happened over the past year.  Time has felt miss-shapen––both short and long, simultaneously.  I know time is in fact actually malleable.  Science tells us this, that what we experience and measure with clocks is only our human need to organize the world. But this year every day has blended into the next, broken up only by activities like Zoom meetings, food shopping, the occasional visit to the dentist, and whatever outdoor activities we can manage.  

When quarantine got serious here, mid-March 2020, was when this time confusion began.  I can date it exactly.  On Saturday March 7th I went to a concert.  The guitarist was Italian, had come here from Italy.  I remember wondering:  When, exactly did he come from Italy?  Did he bring that virus with him?  (Italy, we had heard on the news, had suddenly become a hotbed of this strange new illness.)  I remember feeling grateful to be seated way in the back of the audience.  On the following Wednesday night I went to a concert at St. Stephens church in Middlebury.  Oddly, the singers were scattered in difference parts of the church. Guests in the pews sat isolated from one another.  This was my introduction to social distancing. At the end of the concert I wanted to say hello to one or two people I knew, but no one seemed to be interacting. I felt on edge.  I think everyone did.  It was the official beginning of a strange time.

Without calendar signposts like a taking off a week or two to somewhere distant, going to a festival or a graduation, or having some other special event to attend, the months became indistinguishable.  Did this happen last week?  Or was it a month ago?  The weeks drag on with a sameness that make them hard to differentiate, while simultaneously that mini-event, that trip to the dentist maybe, feels as if it happened months ago, or wait–was it last week?  Time slithers by and there’s nothing to hold onto.

 

Hardly anyone I know has gone out at night since last March. What’s to go to?  Night is when we used to go to parties, see plays, attend concerts, go to meetings.  Actual meetings. I watch too much TV.  When I chat with friends we talk about Netflix movies we’ve seen.  I read a lot.  But then I always did.  It’s the TV watching that feels different. 

But it's only us humans...

 

Time has its usual shape (or space, or moment, or whatever) to all those creatures who live outside. For them, time is neither slow nor fast. It just sort of is. Nothing has really changed. (I'm not including our pets, since they have been having a pretty decent time of it, what with their keepers being around nearly 100% of their time.)  Because there has been snow on the ground most of January, and February began with snow and more snow, it's easy to see what our wildlife has been up to. 

Unlike the indoors, the outdoors is a busy place.  

Under an apple tree, mouse tracks.  Hundreds of them!

What kind of bird?

Rabbit tracks, coming toward the camera.

Yesterday morning my next door family heard two shots.  The sounds apparently came from south of my house. (I wasn't home to hear.)  What’s to hunt at this time of year?  

Skiing in the fields across the road. 

Startled turkeys take off from Otter Creek. 

Only a few days ago while skiing in the fields across the road I had noticed a hunting chair at the edge of a field across the road, and footprints (human, that is) leading to the same farmhouse to which a year or so ago I tracked clear prints of a deer killed post-season.  So what was it that was shot at, or, more likely, killed this time? A turkey? A coyote, would be my guess. You have to keep in mind that quite a number of people here are still shooting coyotes and bobcats for fun, not to mention trapping foxes, orhunting bears with hounds, as if it was still 1821. Add "shooting stuff for fun" to the list of things to do to fill the days.

*with apologies to the film "The Vast of Night"