One week in isolation

Linda and I are now calling the world of only a couple of weeks ago, the good old days. I’m half joking and half serious. The world has changed so swiftly and so dramatically that I’m still a little shell-shocked. The part of me that’s in denial forgets that I can’t just order something online or walk to the store. When I watch a movie at night, I see familiar scenes of people gathering socially and I realize I can’t do that anymore either.

There’s not going to be any spontaneous spending sprees at our local Decathlon.

I suppose living in a motorhome for the past 6 years has trained me for this new world. Being confined to a relatively small space is a new concept for most people but it’s old hat to us RVers.

Today marks the end of our first week in isolation at a campground just south of Paris that resembles, as my friend Glenn observed, a scene from the Walking Dead (sans zombies). It is still too early for me to feel the full impact of this predicament. We have been at campgrounds in the past for a few weeks where we rarely went out the door. Fortunately, we are quite comfortable in our little camping car so it makes staying in her for the long term pretty doable.

I think we all learn about ourselves when we are in extreme circumstances such as these. I’ve learned that I do well with a mixture of unstructured time and daily ritual. The latter gives me a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day while the former is good for my creative flow.

For instance, I make sure to empty our toilet cassette each afternoon at about the same time. Every other day, I replenish our fresh water from a hydrant in the park. At the same time, I bring a bucket of our grey water to the drain. We also snagged the only site that is on a large concrete slab. It’s a double space and we think it may have been used for outdoor events in the past. One of my responsibilities is to keep it swept, free of all tree debris. It’s good for my mind to look out the window and see an organized and clean space.

A simple life. Going back to basics with water management.

It’s important for me to keep our outside “yard” simple. Two chairs, a table, and a grill when we need it. The last thing I want is to draw attention to our spot. Tarp everywhere and an old beater up on cinder blocks would not be a good look 🙂 We also bring all our garbage up to the dumpster at the entrance. We like to keep the trash cans near us empty. We want to project an image that we care about our space.

A leftover bottle from Morocco to enjoy at a simple Happy Hour.
We bypass these nearby bins and take our trash to the big one at the front of the park.

Being the only ones here (aside from an occasional motorhome that comes for one overnight stay) makes me feel a tiny bit on edge. There’s news of campgrounds closing across Europe. I guess they are not deemed an essential service and most of them are too conducive to social closeness as opposed to distancing. One of the big criteria for closing a campground is communal bathrooms/showers. Fortunately they have been decommissioned where we are staying. Entry into the campground is also automated by a barrier and a credit card machine so there’s nobody required to operate the place. That’s all in our favor. We feel like we can make a good case to stay here should we be asked to leave. We simply have nowhere else to go and would be in violation of the current no-travel rules.

The bathrooms and showers have seen better days but that bodes well for us.

At some point in the next week or so we will have to go to the supermarket. We already have food to last us for much longer but we’d like to also have fresh vegetables, meat and maybe some bread. There is a Lidl’s across the street and a larger supermarket not too far away. It seems like a big adrenaline-rush adventure to go shopping so we are reserving it until we really need to.

Personally, I’m doing really well so far. I’ve got a lot of projects planned for the coming weeks. Even in this life of leisure we have been living, it was hard for me to find dedicated and uninterrupted time to take on projects. I have resisted doing any kind of expense tracking, for instance, but I spent most of yesterday doing that and actually enjoyed it. I want to redesign my current photography website, organize all of my thousands of photographs, the list goes on. Boredom is just not part of my vocabulary.

What our situation will look like for the long term is anyone’s guess. What I find most comforting is that this is a global problem. It’s not unique to us. It has made me reach out to family and friends more and I’m rekindling friendships from my past. So while we are physically isolated, I’m feeling more connected than ever before.

I hope all of our readers are in good health and in a safe place to ride this out. Fortunately, no one we know has contracted the virus and I hope that doesn’t change. In the meantime, share your stories, keep washing your hands and stay off the streets!


Next up: 🙂


…

Previous Post
Next Post

18 Comments

  1. Connie Farquhar

    Thanks for your update Steven. I’m glad you and Linda are doing well and are safe, as are Larry and I. Little projects are getting accomplished and Larry is out tackling a bigger one right now, washing the motorhome.

    1. Ruth

      An encouraging post and I like your daily routine. We too have lots of little projects to tackle and are safe and well, tucked up in NZ. We go into lockdown tomorrow for four weeks. Just missing our own space, but grateful we have a roof over our heads staying with Alan’s elderly parents.

      1. 2chouters

        Thanks Ruth. I think the key to getting through this is to stay productive as much as possible. It’s amazing how many little projects emerge when you look for them 🙂

  4. Judith White

    I am so thankful to be able to read your blogs and see all your photography. I’ve been following you for quite some time, thanks to a friend who gave me the link, and now I forward them on to other friends and family. Since we are all basically isolated at this time, we need media to look forward to…..yours especially!

    1. 2chouters

      Thank you Judith, that’s very gratifying to hear. I’ve been delving through my photographs and I think I have at least one more blog post on the subject. I’m glad you are enjoying what I’m posting.

  5. Laurie

    “It seems like a big adrenaline-rush adventure to go shopping so we are reserving it until we really need to.” I get that! As I approach the grocery store now, I notice my heart beats a little faster. Afraid of what I might catch there, or excited that we are out doing something?? First stop is a trip to the hand sanitizer. First move when we get back in the car: sanitize our hands!

    In “the good old days”, we used to do a week’s worth of shopping in one trip, with a possibly (rare) additional trip at some other time during the week. Now, we do the same – but never know what we will be able to find. Like, our stores are out of yeast! and flour! Who knew we’d all decide to start baking our own bread. (The bread aisle, by contrast, was as normal!) Out of garlic!! Those bins used to hold thousands of heads. Who bought all that stuff?? Did I miss some big news about vampires??

    Nice for us: all the local stores but one now have special early-morning hours at least a couple of days a week for seniors, so the most vulnerable among us (OMG, are we really in that group??) can get into the stores while they are recently sanitized and restocked.

    YAY for your safe (it appears) little spot, for all the food that is still available, for mobility, and for the internet! Always fun when a new blog post pops up.

    1. 2chouters

      Laurie, I think people are headed over to YouTube for inspiration and suddenly there is a rush to start cooking again. I think people are grabbing baking ingredients because it’s the thing to do in isolation. I feel fortunate that we found this campground and that we have all we need. It used to be that a trip to the store would be second nature and instantly forgettable but now it’s a blog-worthy event. For that reason, stay tuned!

Comments are closed.