The prematurely warm, dry spring we’ve enjoyed, worrisome to farmers and gardeners as much of New York state has teetered on the edge of draught, has had one spectacular positive effect. The slow succession of bloom we see in most years seems to have yielded to a simultaneous floral explosion. I don’t recall many years when the peak bloom of daffodils, magnolias, tulips, forsythia, Scylla, vinca, pears, cherries, peaches, nectarine, apricot and wild plum have all overlapped so much, in fact seem to have coincided. The word that comes to mind for me is “acceleration.”
Acceleration seems a particularly apt theme for right now. It’s not just that spring is generally a season of accelerated growth (my unmowed lawn reminds me daily). This year, there is the sense of acceleration abroad in the land. Spring has coincided with widespread vaccination, a miracle of modern science that has allowed us to begin emerging from our pandemic cocoons. And with that re-emergence comes the acceleration of economic activity as large segments of our economy, including travel, restaurants and movie theatres, resume something akin to normal operations. With a new president committed to a major investment in public infrastructure I allow myself to harbor high hopes for a booming, roaring twenties.
My optimism is tempered, however, by realities like large numbers of people resistant to being vaccinated. The same folks who thought it was perfectly fine to endure hundreds of thousands of deaths and long-term disabilities, including their own, to achieve herd immunity are unwilling to risk some unlikely long term side effect decades from now to achieve that same end. They therefore guarantee that the novel coronavirus will remain with us, potentially in a more lethal, vaccine-evading form, to drag down our collective well-being. I try to be understanding about this resistance, but ultimately find such mass nihilism and selfishness infuriating.
My general anticipation of good times ahead is also modulated by a certain annoyance that the plunge back into life is so abruptly upon us. Decisions which could be frozen in amber while regular life was in suspended animation now must be made. I have been putting off deciding the form of my post-pandemic life. I don’t think I can put if off any longer.
An analysis in the New York Times this weekend spoke of the contraction of friend and family relations that took place during the pandemic. (“The Pandemic Shrank Our Social Circles. Let’s Keep It That Way”. It pointed not just to the loss of some relationships, but to the renewal and deepening of others, and suggested the potential benefits of maintaining a narrower social circle, but a more meaningful one, post-pandemic. It resonated with me, and not just with respect to my social life.
Like many people fortunate enough to have two homes, city and country, for the last year I narrowed my life to the country. I was certainly not alone in making this choice. According to another article in the Times this week (“How the Pandemic Did, and Didn’t, Change Where Americans Move”), there was only one respect in which the pandemic changed American migration patterns. That was that certain extremely expensive urban areas, most notably New York and San Francisco, showed dramatic out-migration from their most affluent neighborhoods. And areas at the periphery of their metropolitan areas, incompatible with daily commuting but close enough to allow a weekly foray to the City, gained dramatically. Based on analysis of postal address changes, the area in the entire nation with the most dramatic shift in migration (from small incremental losses to a nearly 10% gain) was the Hudson, New York “metropolitan area.” It was followed in second place by the Kingston, New York region. Also high on the list was the Torrington, Connecticut region. All places where second homes form a large part of the housing stock, and where those homes s