Has going outdoor helped you with adjusting to Covid and this new normal?

Aerielle Max said:

This pandemic has made me feel lonely and sad. The outdoor has been a great helped in keeping me sane.

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Cornelius said:

I get out for at least two walks a day, taking the dog around the neighborhood, and occasionally will run errands on my bicycle, which is always refreshing.

As this year drags on, however, even the dog walks have taken on a depressing side, as I notice our working class southwest-side Chicago neighborhood slide farther into a true economic depression. I would say the majority of my neighbors work in the construction trades & commercial kitchens, all of which have been decimated by the covid lockdown, with only a one-time government payment of $1,200 so far this year. Our postal zip code has had the highest number of covid infections in the entire state of Illinois. And now, as they say, winter is coming.

A small cabinet with a plexiglass window, crudely made from a shipping crate, appeared at the end of our block alongside an empty lot which neighbors had themselves turned into children's playground some years ago [climbing obstacles made from tree trunks, that sort of thing], as the city's Park District has no money to spare. Cans of food began showing up the cabinet, and it's now a full-fledged free food pantry for our couple of blocks. Leave what you can, take what you need. My girlfriend & I will buy extra on our weekly trip to Aldi, then a few times a week I'll leave cans of beans, tomatoes, corn, tins of meat, etc. All gone by the next dog walk. We also sometimes leave packets of surgical masks a friend sneaks out from her job at a hospital. I bought a bag of 100 P-38 can openers from an army surplus site and always leave a few behind on a small key hook inside the "pantry" for guys living rough without a kitchen, the number of which have dramatically increased locally.

A small shanty town has sprung up in a desolate area alongside our neighborhood's larger, official park - it was formerly railroad property, but the tracks have been taken up. Tents made from tarps, men cooking over a fire fed by pieces of broken pallets. Looks straight out of a film of the 1930s, or stories I heard from my grandmother & great-aunt, and never expected to witness in my own lifetime. A couple major freight lines border our neighborhood, running above grade, and now several underpasses host small batches of crude tents along one sidewalk, the other left open for pedestrian traffic. It's rather stark.

So, yeah, strolling around the neighborhood is no longer the rejuvenator it once was - if anything, it can be worse than reading the news! In the spring we began making a point of trying to take three to four hikes a month in the Indiana Dunes National Park, which stitches together patches of forest, beach, and sand dunes scattered among the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, only a 45 minute drive away. That has been wonderful & restorative, and needless to say, the dog loves it as well. Not sure what I'd do without the dog, honestly, as my own work has now began to dry up as well and I spend far too much time at home on weekdays with her as my only company until the evening.

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