Framing Quarantine Time - Silver Star Hike

I went on an adventure yesterday morning, departing at 6am to hike Silver Star, and needing to be home by 11am. 45 of paved roads, then 45 minutes of gravel and the worst rutted out road I've ever driven on. I almost turned back, but persevered, and the Outback performed admirably. Only smelled a little bit like the transmission was overheating once I got to the top.

I was hiking by 7:30am and was basically in the clouds the entire time, which were so thick that I almost got turned around a few times. I had to turn back because of snow in some areas (kind of cool for May 15th), and ended up just wander the ridge at the top while talking with Kai Cash about his supply chain and environmental impact transparency project.

Saw some deer, plus lots of poop from coyotes or some other animal. Listened to a This Is Uncomfortable episode about a woman and her challenges dealing with her family's finances after her dad passed away and her mother turned to extravagant spending as a coping device, then got cancer herself. Pretty depressing.

Then listened to a Tim Ferriss interview with Ryan Holiday about stoicism in the context of this pandemic. Some good tidbits:

• "How can you make the next three to six months some of the most enjoyable or productive of your life? Or if that’s too much pressure, you can phrase it different ways. How can you make the next three to six months something you look back upon as a sacred time that you really treasure, not just survive, right?"
• Also - “Alive time or dead time, what will it be?” I think whether this quarantine goes for two more weeks, obviously it’s going to go much longer than that, or whether it goes for two more years, all you know is that you have that block of time. What you do control is how you use that time and what you get out of it. I have one thought on fear. There’s a Hebrew saying that I love, it’s from the 1800s, but it goes, “The world is a narrow bridge and the important thing is to not be afraid.” The point is when you’re walking on a narrow balance beam or a narrow bridge, the one thing you can’t do is be scared, because it’ll mess you up and you’ll fall.
• I want to avoid feeling like we just need to get to the end of this period as soon as possible, or avoid feeling like we need to get to the end of the day, or the hour, as soon as possible. That will take deliberate intention and focus on the present.
• This is an opportunity to focus on habits, mindfulness and self-improvement. Keep scheduling things with friends, because I have the time. Keep doing fun mini-projects with the kids, and writing it down.
• Maggie, Chase and I went to the park yesterday and brought the ladder-ball game. After throwing at the ladder structure for a while, they decided that it was more fun to just throw them around the field, or even straight up. Amazingly, no one got bonked in the head.
• The kids both like the books 'There's a monster in your book" and "There's a dragon in your book." The book asks you to tickle the characters, shake the book, blow on the characters, or shout at them, and then the characters react on the following page. Maggie and Chase are both eager to engage in this.
• Salary - the kids are calling the foam circle fractions "salary". "Do you want salary? Look, salary!" "Dad- what salary means?"
• The kids are obsessed with the concept of mail right now, and spend hours a day creating mail delivery scenarios for each other using mailboxes and envelops.
• This interest extends to delivering mail to our neighbors, which involved drawing some pictures, then going to Sandy or Ed and Hilary's house to put them in their mailbox. Yesterday in the evening, after they'd delivered mail to Ed and Hilary, we were in the backyard and Ed and Hilary were in their back yard with friends. Very quietly, and looking at me, Chase said: "Ed, there's mail for you in your mailbox. Ed, check your mail. Hehe." Very cute
• We talked a lot last night about the aphid, ant, and ladybug fight for survival that happens daily on the leaves of our plum trees. The ants farm the aphids and drink the honeydew that the aphids secrete. The ladybugs eat the aphids, so the ants try to defend their aphids from the ladybugs. The kids are quite enthralled by this. We put our tape strips on the trunk of the plug tree to catch the ants, and Maggie has been trying to squish some of them also, which I have mixed feelings about.