It was winter 1986. I was a senior in college, 21 and living in Boulder Colorado. Kiki and I drove to Laramie Wyoming to spend some time in a vintage Airstream that a medicine woman stored on her land. The trailer was out in the country, where she promised thirteen wild horses roamed. We stopped at her small house along the way. She fed us and gave us a buffalo robe for the journey. We were driving my mom’s retired Ford EXP—a low to the ground, two-door sports car. As we drove further away from town the snow began to fall more heavily. Having grown up in the Midwest and now living in Colorado for many years, I was no stranger to driving in blizzards. Nevertheless the visibility got worse and we entered a white out. We found ourselves stranded. The road was no longer visible. We were miles from anywhere and night was falling.

Throughout the night I sparingly turned the car on and off for heat. We shared the buffalo robe. The storm raged on. I went outside a number of times with my small ice scraper thinking I could carve out the blowing mound of snow that had now swept the car off its wheels.

As an English major, I had brought my Riverside Shakespeare textbook with me. We always had reading to do! So, as the storm continued and Kiki wondered if we would ever be found, I was doing my homework. There I was, reading sonnets, with my green REI headlamp beaming light onto the well-worn pages.

One might think this is where I write about how Shakespeare saved my life during a difficult time. No. Not this time. I’m sure reading his sonnets added perspective, but recently, when my girlfriend was telling me to ‘tell her a story’ while she muted the phone and did the dishes, this story came up. I hadn’t thought of it in years until I was sharing with a colleague this strange sense of not feeling ‘productive’ enough while the world faces a pandemic. We caught ourselves and mused at our sense of urgency and conditioning.

G, my gf, a poet, had suggested I write this story. It has already written itself, she told me.

I wondered what the ‘so what’ of the story was. She told me it could just be a story. Hmm. But, as my legs took to the trail, as is their way, seemed like more wanted to come forward.

G was connecting it to the larger phenomena of so many of us trying to act ‘normally’, with the same expectations of ourselves, in the middle of an unprecedented event. Covid19.

This morning the governor of California told 40 million Californians to shelter-in-place. The news circulates around us. I take it in in small doses. China had no new cases yesterday but Italy had more. Trump continues to act ineptly when we need to be manufacturing more masks and respirators.

My university graciously extended our spring quarter start date by a week so we can take more time to cue our classes up. The situation we are in is much more complex than all of that...but somehow, actually, doing my work grounds me. It gives me a sense of an anchor when so much is unknown.

What I know is that in this moment I can attend to this moment. I can be in control of whether I am freaking out about an imagined future, or actually being present with what is directly in front of me. I have enough food. I have shelter. I have clean water. No small things. And, I can cut myself a little slack and take the circumstances into account when I’m internally gauging my level of concentration or productivity. I have control over that inner judge—and can tell her to relax.

If I had died in that snowstorm, would it have mattered that I did my homework? No. But perhaps reading Shakespeare at that moment grounded me in a way that was useful. If I die of Covid19 will it matter that my spring classes are all set to go? No. But being in the practice of creating them through the lens of loving kindness for myself and my students, does matter. It does ground me in the present.

I suppose I am advocating we bestow a certain level of gentleness and compassion upon ourselves and others as we navigate new terrain.

In the field of somatics, we are more powerful when we are grounded and at ease, rather than contracted. Staying centered and breathing is the first step.

The classes will get created. Our world will get to the other side of this. We are in this together and our interdependence is vividly apparent. And, just so you know, you can rest assured, if we’re ever in a snow storm together I will not only share my buffalo robe with you, but will also read you Shakespeare. Only this time, it won’t be to complete the homework.

A pick up truck found us the next morning

Lessons from Laramie