Deadwood

Had you asked me this past Saturday morning where I thought I’d be right now, I would’ve said Deadwood, South Dakota. Camping, under the stars, in the Black Hills... on my way to Omaha. To my great frustration however, I am writing to report that I am not in Deadwood, South Dakota.

No, I’m in Invermere, BC, in the basement of the house where I grew up. Cut off from the physical world. Ever since pressing the send button on that missive outlining my trip to Nebraska, I’ve been battling this really bad flu that’s been going around the past two years. Cosmic timing, really. Yup, I got the vid. Got it bad. Of course, it could be worse, everything could be worse. But I am 3X Moderna’d.

After I wrote that post, I took Guille for a long walk over lunch up by Quarry Lake and that’s when the symptoms first hit. And they hit hard. Like a tidal wave. I could barely keep my eyes open on the drive back to my place in Banff. I was dizzy. I slept through the entire afternoon. When I finally managed to stir, I took a rapid antigen test, and... positive.

I have no idea where I picked it up. My contraction of the virus has no apparent source. None of my roommates have tested positive. None of the people I spent time with in the preceding week tested positive.

Now I’d been hearing rumours of a rising case count in the Bow Valley. But after the kind of travelling I did this winter, spending considerable time in Pitkin and Teton Counties, both of which were for a time in the top five across the entire USA for cases per capita, after I managed to miss getting the virus in Ski Country USA, I suppose it was by my own damn hubris that I thought I was out of the woods. Yes, despite being an out and about resident of one of Canada’s top tourist destinations. That being Banff, Alberta.

You mean to say you thought you were home free living in a Jason Kenney Alberta tourist destination!? Umm, yeah, thought I was. Puddenhead.

Late Sunday afternoon after sleeping all day, I packed my bags and got out of the house I live in with three others to save them from getting it (so far, so good). I drove to the basement of my childhood to serve my confinement. The first three/four days were downright awful. I had a horrible fever throughout the day and night. And every time I swallowed, it felt like I’d forgotten to chew that rusty razor blade sandwich I didn’t know I ate. And the headache, and the fatigue and the... I could go on. Let me state the obvious: this virus is not something you want to come down with. Though you don’t need me to tell you that. I envy the asymptomatic, the ones who have managed to still miss it, despite the odds.

This virus works in mysterious ways.

For instance, yesterday I woke up and felt pretty darn good. Overnight, I’d made considerable gains. I thought I was well on my way. I thought I was BACK. Back to voraciously reading about stocks, Russia, this, that. Back to voraciously playing my guitar. I did all that. I even took Guille out for a walk in the woods. Hell, maybe even Omaha could still happen?!?! So I took a rapid antigen test. Positive. No real surprise there.

But when the sun went down and I laid horizontal, things nosedived. Through the night, I could not sleep. My mind raced. I tossed and turned, thinking about all the things I need to do, am not doing, and should’ve done. Thinking about the damn markets. They’ve been on a hell of a bull run lately. Is there a correction on the way? I mean you’ve got Michael Burry of all people saying we’re soon due. Check his Twitter. War going on, crazy inflation, frothy US stock market. This is one of the few people on the PLANET who saw the ’08 housing crash come.

And my stomach was a mess. I have no idea know what happened. Call it a covid sleepless night? Whatever it was, by sunrise, I felt like I was back where I started. Sore throat, fever, yadda yadda.

So today was a struggle. All kinds of wild thoughts, weird feelings. By dinner though, I somehow started feeling much, much better. Good enough to go for a walk with Guille. And what a perfect late April night in the Columbia Valley. Sun setting over the Purcells, Lake Lillian shimmering...

Good enough to write this missive. Good enough to learn a few new licks on the Taylor. And good enough to start a new novel - Steinbeck’s Red Pony - from early in his career. I don’t know where this book came from. But there it was in my growing collection. It’s ancient. One of the first printings from the 30s. And it’s illustrated.

So this virus works in mysterious ways.

For me, it’s been a weeklong roller coaster ride. What will tomorrow bring? Was last night anomalous? All I can think about are the lyrical, pastoral descriptions of life on a Central California farm in the early 20th century. For a boy named Jody, whose father has gifted him a red pony purchased for not much money at a sheriff’s auction in town. Jody names his red pony Galiban Mountains, but the cowhand who works for his father says that’s too long. Instead, call the pony Galiban. And then Jody brings his friends over to show off his new pony named Galiban.

“Six boys came over the hill half an hour early that afternoon, running hard, their heads down, their forearms working, their breath whistling. They swept by the house and cut across the stubble-field to the barn. And then they stood self-consciously before the pony, and then they looked at Jody with eyes in which there was a new admiration and a new respect. Before today Jody had been a boy, dressed in overalls and a blue shirt - quieter than most, even suspected of being a little cowardly. And now he was different. Out of a thousand centuries they drew the ancient admiration of the footman for the horseman. They knew instinctively that a man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger than a man on foot. They knew that Jody had been miraculously lifted out of equality with them, and had been placed over them. Galiban put his head out of the stall and sniffed them.”

So you read Steinbeck while in the basement of your childhood home while battling Covid. And your mind drifts elsewhere, to life on a farm outside Salinas California in 1923. Where, to a Canadian, it’s summer all the time.

And California is still Rancho California.

And paradise has not yet been lost.

And computers, the internet, Twitter, COVID, don’t yet exist.

And the world is disconnected.

A simpler time, never to return.

So although I don’t find myself tonight camping in Deadwood en route to Omaha, it’s reading a 90 year old book called Red Pony by John Steinbeck that’s enough to break me free from feeling like...

Deadwood.