COVID-19: Beginning Week Three

Just a quick update.

We're still hunkering down here in our Southwestern outpost. All is well. We continue to wait and watch. We have food, water, power, internet, satellite and some of the most beautiful skies in the world.

We are blessed, and we'll get through this.

Our COVID-19 cases continue to rise. As of last count, we had 57 cases. Still no deaths, thank the Lord. While 57 cases isn't a lot, we had 0 cases only two weeks ago. So yes, as we start Week 3, we're all concerned. We're far from the situations now faced in places like Italy, New York and California, but we also don't have the resources if we do encounter a spike here.

So yes, we wait and watch. And sometimes, hold our breaths.

As you've heard (frequently) from me over the span of my posts on this blog, we don't live in, around or near a big city and that sometimes leads to being a little behind the rest of the modern high tech world as well as lacking other conveniences.

In just the last few months we were able to finally find decent internet services that actually let us load pages without waiting 20 minutes. (It's via microwave.) We're still streaming challenged, but we can always buy the Blu-rays after the fact. We don't have access to natural gas. We heat by propane, and have to remember to check the tank level so we don't run out. We can't just run to the corner store if we're missing something in our cupboard. Running to the neighborhood Wal-mart is about a 15 mile round trip, and that's the closest grocery store to where we are. We have to plan our food purchases a little more carefully. And we have three refrigerators and a freezer so we can purchase in bulk.

People sometimes ask us: "How can you live way out there? Doesn't it bother you to be so isolated? Don't you miss the city?"

Our answers are: Because we love it, no, and maybe we did once.

The truth is living in a community like ours sometimes has benefits far beyond modern conveniences.

I wanted to post an account by one local of what makes our area--the East Mountains--so great.. I'm paraphrasing some of this, but the gist of the sentiments are what he expressed.

This was related by a Viet Nam era vet:

My daughter offered to pick up a few things for us to make sure we wouldn't run out. She did her best to maneuver two shopping carts around Walmart to get everything on our joint lists. 

When people gave her dirty looks she explained that she was also shopping for her parents. That changed everyone's attitude. 

One women had two packages of toilet paper and put one of them in my daughter's basket. Another woman had two cases of water and put one of them in my daughter's basket. Another women turned to her son and told him to help my daughter with the second basket, he wound up pushing it out to her car for her. 

This is the East Mountains. 

While people are mugging woman in grocery store parking lots and stealing their groceries in Albuquerque, East Mountain people are helping complete strangers and accepting their word as to why they have two baskets. East Mountain people helping each other and coming together. God bless you all.

Last I checked, this post got over 900 likes and a whole lot of "Heck, yeahs!"

And that's why we love the East Mountains. We'll be happy to wait on streaming and faster internet and closer shopping, thank you very much. We have something so much better and so much rarer. We have  community.

And together, we'll get through this. :)

Have a great week.