Many people don't understand why you would have a pet. I can tell you why: To not be alone in times like this. It's hard enough to practice social distancing, even though the country is empty up here anyways. If someone tells you, you are not allowed to get close to people, it still feels different.
So at least, I have my dogs to cuddle with. And I have my dogs to go for a walk with. Winter doesn't stop up here. Not yet. Just in the last days, we got plenty of snowfall. It is nice, but as well: enough. Enough shoveling (nice training), enough breaking through the snow until my hips. Enough shoveling (did I mention that yet?). As long as I don't look at pictures from the rest of Europe, I don't care about the snow. But friends sending me pictures from picnics at the lakeside on the green meadows, make me a little jealous I have to admit.
But then again: what is more beautiful than going for a walk in the fresh deep snow? Untouched landscape, no man no animal around you? Just you and nature? That's why I moved to Norway. Why I love it here. So why complain? Well, walking the same distances over and over again, get somehow boring. Even though, there is a new beauty every new day.
The dog tries to run ahead of me, until he finds out that it is easier to walk behind me. And suddenly: another sprint in front of me, trying to jump, but he just can swim. A Corona-lonely-walk. Just him and me, but at least two tracks, two shadows.
It is Easter time which means that whole Norway is off to a 10 days vacation. My plan was to spend the holiday in sunny Switzerland. That was before Corona. How quickly can life change?
For me it is the very first time, that outer circumstances redefine my life. Of course, I have been leaving my home country, I have been changing homes and jobs. But my own decision was alway involved. It is not now. Talking to a friend who grew up in Belarus, it shows me how lucky I am. Maybe it is because of that that it is so hard to accept?
My friend is the same age as me and has experienced a few major changes in her life. She remembers the accident in Chernobyl, which still gets her very emotional. And she remembers the collapse of the Soviet Union. For her, it is the third time, that life changes. She couldn't affect any of these changes, just had to accept them. Is it easier for her to deal with all our new rules? Well, for the first time she lives in a country where communication actually is practised, where information is given. I almost feel guilty, not being able to accept all the changes.
The virus is here. Unseen, silent, but here. Even though it has not arrived in our little town yet. We know it, and we know we have to fight it. But give up all the projects planned? Put everything on wait? I can't do it. I really just refuse. Happily, in our town it is not difficult to keep distance. There is no park with spring flowers and hundreds of people. That is our advantage now.
But in these times, where emptyness is everywhere, where distance is normal, it is not alway easy to find the beauty in loneliness.
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