Rural preparedness in the time of coronavirus
My last trip to town was to get the chainsaw on this side of the mountain. I picked up more dog and chicken feed. I was careful to ask if I could hurt anyone else by taking too many bags of feed.” – Cathy (last name withheld)
I grew up on a dirt road in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas among self-sufficient people who chopped wood, gardened, canned vegetables and raised bees and chickens. Many of them, like my parents, were part of the back-to-the-land movement in the 1970s and sought out rural places where land was affordable, like the Ozarks, and where they could work at building a way of life that was sustainable and based on connection to and respect for the land. Susan Gateley*, a retired nurse who moved to Johnson County in 1980, said of the folks in her neighborhood, “We talk about coronavirus and we talk about gardens.” Gateley said she was in self-quarantine, but the rhythm of her days was much the same as ever. She fed her horses. She tended her garden. She ordered seeds. She took long walks.
As the coronavirus has spread across the United States and Arkansas has seen an increase in cases, I’ve been thinking of the rural people I grew up with in Johnson County and how they are dealing with COVID-19.
Dennis Hargiss, who studied religion at Harvard University, lives near my parents with his girlfriend, Anne Wenzel, in an old farmhouse that lacks indoor plumbing but has an expansive library. Hargiss moved to Johnson County decades ago as a part of the back-to-the-land movement. When I asked him how he had prepared for the coronavirus, he said, “I am reminded of a song by Jon Anderson of ‘Yes’ many years ago when he sang, ‘Let the forest be salvation long before it needs to be.’ We came here along with so many others back when we back-to-the-landers often needed to explain or defend our lifestyle choices to others.” Hargiss, like my parents, had wanted to live his life more in tune with nature, with the land, and to grow his own food. In addition to those reasons for moving back to the land, Hargiss added, “perhaps now one can add ‘prudent’ to the list.” For Hargiss and many others in rural areas, being prudent means tending to a garden, collecting rainwater, investing in solar energy and trying to be more self-sufficient in ways that make a smaller carbon footprint.
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