Could this be the end of Ditto Days?

Here is a typical conversation as I met friends and neighbours on my walks around the neighbourhood (my only social life) this past winter.

“How are you?” one asks. “Fine” comes the answer – and then a pause. “Well, as good as can be expected…” the voice trails off. “Given the circumstances. And you?” Ditto.

“So what are you doing today?” I think of what I did yesterday, and the day before, and last week and last month… Ditto.

Day after day after day of sameness. Ditto Days. Big sigh.

This winter was a hard one, on so many levels. In early October the rain started and never stopped for months. Mama Earth has shown us extraordinary things and this year threw everything at us. Floods that disrupted the entire province, cutting off road and rail from the west coast to the rest of the country. Huge snowfalls that went on for weeks, so not typical of this mild winter coastal landscape. Day after day was short, gray and gloomy.

My interior landscape was also disrupted. I found that my usual daily walk routine changed and some days I stayed inside looking out – for no particular reason that I could see or understand. It just happened. I stopped writing. I stopped taking photographs. Restrictions became a place to hide in as I watched people I knew in crisis of one kind or another. I watched what was happening in the outside world alternating between horror and resignation. The collective mood was oppressive, confused, chaotic and restrictive. I could see that it was only a matter of time before this global pent-up frustration would explode and it did, in ways both big and small, collectively and individually. As people sicken, trucks rolled. As the planet burns, humans kill each other.

I recently was reading something about the transition we are going through as we face (or don’t face) the realities of environmental degradation and climate change that has transformed any vision we once might have had about our lives as humans in this world. It asked us to consider the question, “What is your vision for our collective future?” I paused and thought about that and replied, out loud to no one, “I have no vision for the future” and then burst into tears.

In recent weeks it seems the politicians have decided the pandemic is over and lifted most public health measures including mask wearing in public places, leaving the medically vulnerable (me included) on their own. Some people (not me yet) are travelling a bit more, seeing more people, attending more group events, ditching the masks and the distancing, taking advantage of the reprieve. Everyone makes their own choices and it seems like deja vu. We’ve seen this before and it did not go well.

But here’s the thing. This is not ‘before’. Remember always that everything changes, that this too shall pass and shape shift into something else, for better or worse, and the future is not ours to see. Que sera sera. So I take my refuge in the natural world and it is a good place to rest and return to joy. Now we are past spring equinox and with each passing day the great, oppressive weight of those winter months is releasing for me as the days get longer and brighter and finally, finally we are blessed with some days of sunshine in between the rains. My mood lightens. I look outside to a blaze of yellow as the potted daffodils are in full bloom and flowering shrubs explode in colour. I’ve had a few days of being outside gardening and that’s all it takes for a welcome attitude adjustment. I’m out walking again every day, my camera is dusted off and soon the longer weekly day hikes will begin.

The days no longer feel all of a sameness and it is the natural world that comes to the rescue once again. Every day there is something new to see and celebrate as spring reveals itself – new buds, new flowers, new songbirds returning and newborn lambs are back in the farmer’s fields.

On April Fool’s day I looked out to the backyard to this strange sight:

A visitor from our neighbours’ garden on the other side of the back fence. She too was tired of restrictions and had decided to expand her perimeter. The next day she returned and perched on the top of the fence looking in. This time she brought a friend.

Now this hasn’t happened before, this is something new, something smile-making. I take it as an omen. The end of Ditto Days.