In the time of covid-19 with so much uncertainty swirling around our lives, many are unemployed, or in my case, I’m employed, but my employer is having me stay home. I have several projects I work on from my personal computer, but I still have substantial portions of my day at my disposal. We practice social distancing as asked, and for the most part, we are good citizens who remain at home. Luckily, I have a backyard and garden where I can spend much of my leisure time. Last week, I spent an hour considering the accomplishments of my day, or days (or is it daze?), and wondered if I’m making the best use of my copious amounts of spare time. The sad realization is that I was spending (or squandering) hours of my time each day on social media; five minutes here and a half hour there. I always took time to check in at night before going to bed and it was usually the first thing I did in the morning. I would come in at lunch and make a salad, and while I ate, I scrolled through more feeds; Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Even with all this extra time at my disposal, I was horrified at the realization at what I had become. I was following feeds that were borderline corrupting my thinking. In fact, I began asking myself the question several weeks ago about several feeds, “Where is this leading me?” It was time to disconnect. I’ve deleted accounts before, usually arriving at the same place I was at on Friday. It only took about ten minutes to disconnect myself from Facebook and Instagram and delete those accounts. I kept YouTube because I do get a lot of enjoyment watching photography and gardening videos, and also America/Britain’s Got Talent. I didn’t feel they were leading me into “darkness”. After that 10-minute purge, I immediately began feeling relieved and happier. I no longer had anyone to keep up with. No compulsion to sink back into the mindless vortex of digital babel. The best part of the whole deal, I now have an extra two hours of each and every day back.

The restrictions have begun easing a bit in Utah. We still need to practice social distancing, but if one is creative, one can still get out and see the beautiful world around us. Our son has been living fulltime in an RV with his family and they move around the state boondocking on federal land. The maximum stay is 14 days in one location. This week they moved to Strawberry Reservoir, only an hour away from our home. Since they were secluded in their campsite, and the maximum gathering group size has been raised to 20, we figured we could venture out in our Scamp and spend a few nights with them and see our two grandkids. It was wonderful to expand our horizons after two months of lockdown at home in Orem. Of course, I took my camera with me. With kids going to bed at 8:30 just at sunset, I grabbed my camera and took off for the nearby aspen forests to shoot. I also made it out each morning for sunrise while everyone else slept in. By the time I returned to the Scamp, grandkids were beginning to stir, and my wife had hot water ready to make a cup of tea. It was a wonderful way to break up our week.

The aspen forests are just beginning to wake up around our 8,000’ elevation campsite. The newly emerging leaves are soft velvety green and the flowers, when backlit, set the forest ablaze almost making it seem it was covered in frost. I’ve decided that an aspen forest has many faces. By far my favorite look is in the fall when the leaves are glowing in autumn colors. Winter is nice to see the thin spindly branches and the tall slender trunks. This time of year is also interesting as a green glow seems to hover over the forest.