Quarantine: Step In Time
One hour of allotted time outdoors each day? Ay there’s the rub. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil - that is, out of quarantine - no doubt we’ll think back to how much shuffling we actually got done. The question on everyone’s lips: to be or not to be a pandemic-jogger.
Despite the rifts between amblers and zealous runners pounding the pavements in pursuit of a Strava pb, on the whole, the streets are pleasingly peaceful. I’ve been thinking of Ray Bradbury’s short story The Pedestrian (1951) in which he envisions an outsider wandering the avenues of a screen-studded dystopia. The protagonist is confronted by a policeman who is incredulous that someone would prefer the outdoors to the glare of TVs within. The outsider’s response? ‘“Walking,” said Leonard Mead. “Walking!” “Just walking,” he said simply, but his face felt cold. “Walking, just walking, walking?” “Yes, sir.” “Walking where? For what?” “Walking for air. Walking to see.”’
Being unable to go outdoors has transformed the meander down the road into something short of a ticketed event. Trees become monuments. You become creepily invested in the status of the neighbours’ bins. If you’re lucky enough to live near green space it can provide relief from the hours spent indoors periodically monitoring the interior of the fridge.
Walking clears the mind and braces the soul; it ticks the boxes of all the health things bullet-pointed in pharmacy leaflets. However, the outdoors is more than a vehicle for gaining kudos on Strava: it has inspired artists and writers alike by drawing them into a creative solitude. As the pedestrian states, ‘but now these highways, too, were like streams in a dry season, all stone and bed and moon radiance’.
Amongst his other attributes, Charles Dickens was a prolific walker. With his classic verbose flourish, he bemoaned that ‘if I couldn’t walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish’. Try and justify your third ‘essential’ walk of the day using this indisputable logic to reason with Dominic Raab. Judging by Raab’s sallow face, however, he feels pretty much the same. How long will it take for the government to distribute ‘Raab’s Rambles’: a weekly bulletin highlighting quarantine ‘escapes’ around Britain. Pop-up hand sanitiser dispensers will be highlighted like scenery hot-spots on National Trust maps. (It must be said, however, that walks at night should be greatly avoided if the government’s rather stab in the dark approach during the pandemic is anything to go by).
For those for whom exercise wrings as much agony and tears as trying to nourish a sourdough starter to life, even a lap of the block can be enough to gain some pandemic-perspective. In the final book of Wordsworth’s The Prelude (1799) he describes his moonlit ascent of Mount Snowdon: ‘silently we sank/each into commerce with his private thoughts’. Walks can provide time for mental transition - even if it means reasoning with yourself that you shouldn’t, actually, invest more time in your TikTok career.
You could easily imagine Wordsworth taking advantage of quarantine to gallivant through the fields - although there would be a lot less wandering lonely as a cloud, and more assuming of a brisk pace to counteract surplus quarantine calories. I can imagine many overly judicious walkers would gladly join arms with the poet (symbolically, of course) and ‘sally forth’ - walking sticks in hand – even just to wait in line at Tesco.
Don’t forget that in the Bible, Jesus appears to two disciples whilst walking on the road to Emmaus. I’m not saying that on your walk you may be witness to the resurrection, but the way 2020 has gone so far, would it really be a surprise? John Muir did say that ‘in every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks’. Post-pandemic we may be in need of the second coming.
It’s not just writers who like to walk; the characters they create are also no stranger to a soul-searching stroll. No doubt Ishmael would bring a harpoon lest you breach the 2-metre social distancing rule. Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet and Marianne Dashwood would both take to the hills with the intent of a tormented lover. I’m sure Jane Eyre is up there for being a top literary walker - although not everyone can hope to be as fortunate as to find a burning house and blind lover at the end of it. Maybe in week eight of isolation we might be so lucky that society will have descended into something akin to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
If you don’t have access to green space or dystopian plains, then - as with all things in quarantine - you can still get things done virtually! I recommend watching BBC Four’s The Great Mountain Sheep Gatherer (the Tiger King can only get you so far). The camera follows a shepherd herding sheep through the rugged landscape of Scafell Pike in the Lake District. It’s weirdly absorbing and has alluring meditative qualities - although my enthusiasm may be intensified due to weeks of quarantine. It brought to mind Wordsworth’s words on reaching the summit of Snowdon: from ‘that dark deep thoroughfare, had Nature lodged/The soul, the imagination of the whole’. Maybe shepherding wouldn’t be so bad after all. Can you do it via zoom?
Written by Esther Bancroft
A recent graduate of Bristol university, Esther has returned to the pen to write a little bit about a little bit of everything. When not staring at a screen trying to be creative, she likes to buy books without reading them and paint pictures of the sea - which is her healthy obsession.