We’ve never really been any big city people, and maybe that has been pretty clear from the start? But when the opportunity came to live in NYC and to experience everything that everyone are talking about, how could we possibly say no? Even though I started to feel a knot forming in my stomach when we sat on that bus in Madison that rainy afternoon telling all of our friends about it. That knot persisted for quite some time, especially since I didn’t have a job at first. And how do you survive with a rent that is close to 3,000$ with only one income? Well, everything is possible right, and eventually I too had a job within Academia that I could go to. After that happened that knot in my stomach was finally gone, and now we were planning on what restaurant to go to next, or what museum to explore. But we aren’t any night owls and the amount of time leftover for stuff like that was limited, and then life just happened. When January arrived we went to Sweden AGAIN!! can’t believe it since I think I have gone to Sweden less than 10 times in 10 years, and here we were casually traveling to Sweden for a second time in one year. We talked about Covid-19 there, with my friends, and the reality about it. What we thought was true or not.
And then the Virus hit NYC, and not in any easy way. To live in NYC right then and there is hard to explain to anyone who did not go through the same thing. It wasn’t like anything I have ever experienced (of course). Our university closed down, and then everything else. Everyone who could (yeah we were pretty privileged) stayed home. For once we hadn’t gone to the grocery store in a while, and if you should ever have gone to the grocery store ahead of time, it would probably be before a pandemic and the restrictions that comes with it hit. The sirens kept going constantly, all through the day and night, and at that point it started to get scary. We went for weekly walks, and one day over at Randall Island we saw the refrigerator trucks, those trucks that would become the backup morgue for the hospitals when too many people were dying. That was a pretty rough reality. To see and hear all this first hand takes a toll on you. We were fine, and have been fine, but It still takes a toll on you. Around that time our governor mandated masks, and the 6 feet social distancing. And since then the number of cases and deaths have drastically dereased. .
The streets were mostly empty by now, maybe not in East Harlem but around the Columbia University. All the “rich” people fled the city, and the people who were left were people who didn’t have anywhere else to go. It’s been a quite stark contrast between the areas that are “richer” vs “poorer” during this pandemic. And that too has made us upset on all sorts of different levels. We went to the store every second week, walked with our big hiking backpacks to fill them up with 2 weeks supplies. After a while we started to get out more on the weekends, we did a couple of longer bike excursions. After that we transitioned to buy food online, like many other people, and ordering local beer from different breweries in Brooklyn. We even ordered oysters a couple of times, because you need some fun in your life, even during a pandemic. I started investing in rye sourdough early on, and that got me occupied for a couple of weeks. W got invested in pasta making. Of course, our story is very different from many others, and we are very very privileged and have not been struggling as much as other. Part due to the secure jobs we have had, and because of our emergency savings we saved up through the last months, for situations like this. We were still wondering if we would ever get out of this pandemic, well I guess we still are.
Time passed and before we knew it 4 whole months had passed of us working from home. It’s crazy to think that a pandemic hit, and that we are still within the pandemic and probably will be for the foreseeable future. But before all this happened we knew we were about to embark on a new journey, W got a job north of the city and we were moving in December. But back in April we started to get a bit panicked about our situation in the city, and now we just wanted to leave. Because what is the point of living in the city when you can’t enjoy any of its perks? We came for the culture and social life, and that will not be the same any time soon. We emailed, called an talked to people and finally got an agreement to be able to move sooner rather than later. And all of a sudden those last months were a bit easier to go through. We biked some more and tried to explore some more parts we hadn’t really experienced during the weekends, and we even got a raised bed at a community garden nearby. That probably saved us, mentally. Even now we aren’t back to 0 cases in New York State, but very very close. 4 months after our job closed down, it finally started to open again for people like me, who need to go into work to get work done. And in the midst of all this we also had the BLM movement coming through. These past month will be historical and what happened in the US and NYC during these months will probably be written about in history books.
August 1st we embarked of yet a new, and maybe a final chapter of our lives, well, moving wise. We moved to Hudson Valley. Just north of NYC, so we can always take the train back whenever it opens up again. Nearest Hamlet has about 190 ppl in it, and the nearest village has about 1500ppl. It is still unclear which one we are included into, if any. Either way we are surrounded by fields and forest, and one or two roads. It reminds me about where we lived in Alaska, but here there are even fewer houses. A couple of mornings ago I could see the light change outside the window, and I could just put my shoes on and walk out the door and across the road to take some amazingly beautiful photos. Just like I could in Alaska. I was walking down the road, whistling to myself because there are blackies around here. The only attention I sparked though was a deer I saw in the distance. It was just standing there staring at me with the misty morning sun in the background. That is when I knew that I finally found my home, again. The last picture below is taken from our balcony.
