It was March 11 when I flew into Sacramento, where I was scheduled to shoot several vacation rentals over the next week and visit my girlfriend in Nevada City, California, just outside Lake Tahoe in the foothills of the Sierra. The plan was to be there until March 18th, get some work done, have some fun, and then fly back to Portland, but, well, as we all know now, things started to get weird around then.
Really weird.
My girlfriend was dropping me off at the Sacramento airport so that I could get back in time for a job there the following day when the realities of COVID began to set in. That same day, we heard that Sacramento had begun to record its first cases, including an employee at the Sacramento Airport.
As we pulled up to the curbside drop off, she said something that sounded a bit crazy:
“Maybe we should just drive.”
At first, it sounded crazy. You’re proposing driving me to Portland? From Sacramento? Huh? You don’t even have any clothes other than what you’re wearing.
But the more I thought about it, the better the idea started to become.
Less exposure to people, less contact with the outside world, who was still trying to figure out what was going on.
So I walked up to the ticketing counter, cancelled my ticket, and walked back to the car. We looked at each other, smiled, and off we went.
The drive was beautiful.
Well, at least the part that the light was still out for, which started to dip past visible once we got past Mount Shasta and across the Oregon border.
Mount Shasta, California.
We were about 7 hours in and 100 miles outside Portland when we started to get too snoozy to feel safe driving any further, so we pulled off and stayed the night at a motel, asking for a room that hadn’t been occupied in at least 2 weeks.
We got to Portland the next day around noon, just in time for me to make my shoot.
Which, apparently, would be my last for the foreseeable future.
I had several more shoots scheduled, mostly for my client Airbnb, but we received an email from Airbnb that same day informing us they were suspending the photography program until further notice due to COVID19.
And then two events I had scheduled to shoot also cancelled.
And then two independent real estate clients I had scheduled to shoot listings for cancelled.
And then, as I began to realize that things were getting much more serious than we were originally led to believe, I had a decision to make - being as I lived in the same building as my landlords, two elderly folks, was it smart for me to stay there and potentially expose them to this thing?
Probably not.
So that afternoon, I started calling prior clients to see if they had spaces in their rentals or on their properties in case I needed a place to stay until we figured out what was going on. It was on one of those calls to my friends at Oakwood Gardens and Cottages (and alpaca ranch) that the entire plan got turned on its head. She informed me that one of her friends, who was a first responder in Washington State, had some good information that they might be closing the border between Washington and Oregon to help prevent the spread from one of the states, Washington, that got hit with the coronavirus first.
This changed everything.
For if that border could potentially be closed, what was to stop the California Oregon border from closing as well.
After all, it would be the prudent thing to do.
Which left me with an even bigger decision to make.
Do I stay in Oregon, where I live? Or do I return to California, where not only my girlfriend resides, but as do my parents, who are not only both elderly, but include an 83-year old father who recently broke his hip and wrist after taking a spill off a ladder in his beloved garden and is currently in recovery at home.
It was then that I felt I needed to do something to help clear my mind and try to put things in perspective to help me make the right choice, and what better way to do that than to stroll amongst fresh cherry blossoms along Portland’s Waterfront Park, especially knowing that I probably won’t have a chance to see them again this year.
So we did.
We walked.
And for a few precious hours, I was able to get into my ‘happy place,’ frolicking with my camera under a blue outdoor sky.
In Portland.
In the Spring.
During peak cherry blossom season.
After a few hours of deliberation and a social distance meeting on the outdoor deck with my aforementioned landlords later that afternoon, the choice became more obvious by the second - I needed to be on the same side of the border as my folks.
So I packed up the cars with my cat and a few essentials, looked back at my place wondering if, and when, I’d be back, stopped at a local grocery store for some supplies and food, and less than 48 hours after driving up to Portland, I was now on my way right back to my girlfriend’s home in Nevada City, California, where I currently still am, indefinitely, socially distancing and self-isolating and all the things until we know what’s what and what’s next.
Which I’m certain is the case for just about all of us on these most uncertain of days.
Where things go from here, both in the short term and the long term, no one has any idea, but the one thing we can be sure of is that there’s no better time and situation to re-assess all our priorities pre-COVID19 - from how we spent our time, to who we spent our time with, to how we spent our money, to how we spent our attentions. Everything we thought we knew will no longer be the same, and in many cases, perhaps for the better, as we have been forced to be more present and more conscious of the day-to-day, moment-to-moment decisions and choices we are making. If we can find a way to parlay even parts of this mindset into our post-COVID19 lives, it’s hard to view that as anything but a positive.
In the meantime, please take care of yourselves, your communities, your loved ones, and all of those around you. And if you are in position to do so, consider helping those outside of your community with even a small donation, especially those that are on the front lines in the fight against this bugger - not the least of which being first responders and healthcare workers that are working around the clock to beat this thing.
Also, if you'd like to purchase any of my prints to bring nature into your home since we can't really get out into nature ourselves these days while she rehabilitates herself, including some of these images, during this time of weirdness, 15% of all proceeds will be split between Global Giving’s COVID relief fund , and Ecology in Classrooms & Outdoors (ECO), the non-profit I sit on the board of that brings ecology education to kids in underserved communities. Check out my brand spankin' new purchase page on my site (also still a work in progress) for canvas prints, art prints, and even greeting cards.
Now, here are some of those images from that afternoon on the Waterfront. Hope you dig em…
And to follow along with more of my shenanigans, check me out on Instagram.