The Woods are Full

If you have plans on bugging out to the woods you might have missed your chance. They are full. I’ve been going out into the National Forest to do some walking to rehabilitate my knee. Even during the weekdays the dirt roads out in the forest have heavy traffic. Wild camping sites are occupied.

Probably a lot of this is just people from the city looking for something fairly safe to do. However, with people unable to pay rent some of them appear to be on the road full time. Having traveled for months that way myself I know how it looks.

My cousin, in an attempt to avoid people, hiked way out in the wilds on a long abandoned trail and still ran into someone.

I’m curious to see how busy the woods are going to be come hunting season. With the price of food going up and people out of work I expect lots of meat hunters this year. I’m going to be one of them. However, it doesn’t look to be a good year for game. Berries aren’t doing well this year so critters have to work much harder to eat. We might all have to work much harder to eat.

-Sixbears

The Curse of Interesting Times

Yep, still here. Still doing pretty well. My lovely wife and I are making progress around the house.

I did pop something in my knee, so that set things back a bit. That hurt like a son of a gun. Of course, having no medical insurance and looking to avoid hospitals in the time of the pandemic, I just slapped a brace on it. That seems to have helped a lot. It’s still got a ways to go, but it is getting better. One of the things that is helping is pedaling my bike. That works the knee without me having to put my full weight on it.

New Hampshire is doing better than most places as far as this disease goes. However, things are opening up and people are getting a bit too casual about it for my liking. Here’s the thing: if I’m over cautious there’s no harm done. If, however, things are worse than they seem I’m taking necessary precautions. While the risk of infection may be low the consequences for a fat over 60 guy with bad lungs could be dire.

It doesn’t help that my lovely wife just discovered her aunt most likely died from the coronavirus. She had all the symptoms and was even on a ventilator for a few days. She lived in a southern state that’s been accused of hiding the numbers, so that might be an issue.

Speaking of hiding the numbers -there’s a lot more of that going on. The latest example is the fact that information is no longer going to the CDC. While the CDC has its problems the information was public. That info will be harder for the average person to get now.

Getting good information in general is hard these days, but that’s nothing new. During the Great Depression, the word “depression” was never used in the papers. The information was all there, but it was buried deep in the financial section in the back of the paper and you had to crunch the numbers yourself.

With that in mind I did some research looking at how long big business plans on having to deal with fall out from the pandemic. They seem to be expecting issues for at least another year and a half. Prepare for the possibility.

A vaccine is supposed to the magic bullet that makes it all go away. In spite of all the hype, the vaccines in the pipelines all have issues. The safer ones appear to only offer partial protection. Other vaccines appear to have nasty side effects in a significant percentage of the test groups.

I am not against vaccines in principle. Personally, I won’t be in the first wave of those getting it. Not having health insurance is part of the problem. Even if the vaccine was free, if I had complications from the shot I’d be stuck picking up the tab myself.

At any rate, my lovely wife, our kids and grandkids are well. They are all getting by.

Interesting times.

-Sixbears

Don’t Let a Pandemic Go to Waste

The Sixbears extended family continues to do well. The last thing that someone should do is to wait around for a vaccine before moving on with life. The second to the last thing someone should do is to ignore the virus and pretend it went away.

We are taking all necessary precautions. For example, Tuesday we got up super early to drive 50 miles to do groceries. Our local stores have sloppy disease protocols. The store we went to has a time slot for those over 60 first thing in the morning. We also have a good supply of locally raised meats from a nearby farmer. Fish we can get right out of the lake we live on -can get much more local than that.

This year we’ve improved our garden and are taking advantage of wild plants for food and medicine.

It’s been a time for improving our homestead. We will be putting off extended travel for at least another year. Our relief check has gone into preparing for the coming winter.

Plenty of people I’ve communicated with do not want things to go back to the way they were. Some want to continue to spend more time with their families. Some who work for home want to keep doing that.

While my immediate family is doing well, there are those around us not all that well at all. If you have an essential job, especially in health care, you are under a lot of extra stress. Some friends have lost people to this virus. Others are still suffering from the after effects of this disease. Even younger people have dealt with long term lingering ill health. Personally, I don’t feel the need to take risks to get my hair done. They’ll do that for you at the funeral home.

-Sixbears