March 16, 2020
We started to walk out the door of our daughter’s home near Greenville, S.C., to attend a school program at which our grandson had a starring role in front of 300 people. My phone rang. Our son, a medical physicist at a New Jersey hospital urged us, with no give in his voice, to sit tight. We, like millions of Americans, now are “social distancing”: staying home.
Suddenly we’re all staring at our mortality. It’s highly likely we are going to get this thing. We understand that the projections of positives still are too optimistic. Contact is nearly unavoidable. The updates overwhelm the tenuous confidence we feel, or felt, about life in the pseudo-techno age. We assumed the federal government, some expert or agency, would take charge and clear all this up. We know now, four months after we first heard of covid-19, how wrong we were.
So–now what? Only this: persevere. Stay the course, whatever it is. Appreciate the fear and the panic, adjust for it. Remember faith. Encourage, console others. Fly the aircraft.
Before the world changed we finished our two Florida weeks peacefully in Edgewater, visiting cousins Eugene and Jean. Edgewater is a small, quiet spot. Modest-to-elegant neighborhoods are bound by U.S. 1 and the Intercoastal Waterway, which spreads a gentle tidal flow through a network of unpopulated, semi-tropical islands. It’s typical Florida—retirement and fishing are very big, but without the crowds and bedlam of the south or the glitz of the Gulf side.
Monday we discovered the gopher turtles at Dunes State Park in New Smyrna Beach. We drove four miles along the beach to reach the park. The Atlantic, whipped by a 
stiff wind, broke into whitecaps. The turtles live in the dunes, you can watch them dig their nests, as deep as 30 feet, from a two-mile-long catwalk. In the distance to the north we could see the highrises of Daytona Beach, Cape Canaveral is just to the south. The breeze stayed with us, easing the warmth of the March sun. On Tuesday we got Eugene’s boat out on the Waterway and chugged through calm waters. Near the ocean Eugene watched his fishfinder, and we dropped anchor a couple of times so he could toss a baited line, the fish weren’t interested. Sleek sailboats cruised by, their hulls gleaming in the glorious sunlight, crewmen waving.
We headed inland the next day. Blue Springs State Park lies along the St. John’s River in a Florida wilderness, miles from the coastal breezes and lush with tropical rainforest.
Westbound on dusty country roads, I recalled I once had a family connection to inland Florida. Decades ago Eugene’s parents, my aunt and uncle on my mother’s side, moved here from farther south, after pulling up their stakes on Long Island. We drove past their old neighborhood in Orange City, an off-the-beaten-track place but a gateway to the rural inland. The settlements are fewer, the scrub woods denser. For me it was a foreign place. When the aunt and uncle passed their children brought them back to Long Island. The family tie was fleeting, but prompted memories.
Just north of the park Eugene and I got out of the truck and walked up a faint trail along the river. “Watch out for the alligators,” he suggested, only partly joking. The forest got thick quickly, the air was thick and pungent. I looked around nervously.
A park ranger briefed us on the variety of the area’s wildlife, including panthers, that visit mostly when the tourists leave. The park borders a natural spring that brings crystal-clear water to the river. The spring is home to a rich range of marine life and is famous as a haven for manatees, slow-moving mammals native to tropical waters that can grow to 12,000 pounds. We caught a glimpse of one huge adult, scarred by boat propellers, grazing on water plants as he or she cruised slowly to the river.
I walked the half-mile trail through the surrounding jungle to the mouth of the spring, which extends more than 100 feet into the earth to a subterranean river. I was alone. The silence was welcome but drew my thoughts to the strangeness of the moment, the covid-19 news encroaching, stocks crashing, the Trump indifference. Meanwhile, our thinking about the future is suddenly more complicated, less certain, than the previous week.
As a sort of comic relief, last week was Bike Week in Daytona Beach. Thousands of husky, tattooed guys and gals on huge Harleys cruised U.S. 1 and adjoining highways, packing bars and fast-food and pizza joints, their engines blasting and deafening the locals, the bikes massed row on row across acres of parking. The local cops and state troopers circled in squad cars nearby. The event rivals the big biker rally in Sturgis, S.D., in August, which I’ve told Sandy we’ll get to one of these years. Today I wonder: are they social distancing?
We skipped Trump on TV Wednesday night. We shoved off Thursday, as Eugene and Jean talked about cutting their winter short and heading back to New York. Ten hours later we stepped out of the van at Mike’s and Marie’s place, dazed by 500 miles on three interstates. Michael’s call came the next morning while the warnings and cancellation announcements lit up the networks and the internet. A trip to a couple of grocery stores confirmed the national uneasiness, with shelves of non-perishables cleared.
We’ll talk, as we always do on these visits, about the attractions of South Carolina, the state parks, mountains, beaches, mild weather, quality health care. We may see a little of that this trip, nodding at the panic but steering clear of crowds. Then home, with memories, hard lessons, and a constant thought. Now, today: courage.
On the Road 