Wellness in the Time of COVID-19
As COVID-19 stalks the globe, the term “wellness” has narrowed its focus to not (yet) infected. Psychologically, of course, we are all already infected.
So far, the West Coast has borne the brunt of the U.S. coronavirus toll, though the East Coast is catching up. As of March 7, Washington State had recorded the most COVID-19 cases, more than 80, and the highest number of deaths, 14. Most of the fatal cases emerged from a Seattle-area nursing home.
California has treated 70 people for the virus, one of whom has died, and new cases continue to emerge at a quickening rate. A handful of cases have appeared in Seattle, leading Starbucks to ban re-use containers and Microsoft to advise employees to work from home if possible.
By the time you read this, all of these numbers will have no doubt increased.
Although Oregon was one of the first states to report the coronavirus, the incidence has held steady at two cases—neither in Southern Oregon where the population density is 30 people per square mile and the only transportation hub is a small regional airport.
Still, mirroring the rest of the nation, our local Costco has run out of toilet paper and bottled water. Last night’s local news featured hand washing techniques (demonstrated by a female newscaster dressed in red and pearls) and a recipe for making hand sanitizer (mix rubbing alcohol with aloe vera). When it comes to face masks, we’re in luck: thanks to summers thick with wildfire smoke, most Southern Oregonians have a face mask tucked away for safe keeping.
Like people worldwide, we live in suspended animation, swinging between the dread of unprecedented quarantines and the hope of an epidemic that never arrives.
The first potential victims of COVID-19 in Ashland, however, are real and present.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), which opened its 2020 season at the beginning of March, draws 300,000 visitors a year to its three theaters. A drop in attendance would be devastating; two summers of smoke and dampened performances have already frayed the bottom line. In a public bulletin last week, OSF offered the only antigens it has: a pledge to disinfect seat backs, armrests and railings before and after performances and a willingness to work with patrons who may not be able to get to a show if a coronavirus outbreak alters their travel plans.
Diminished audiences also threaten the Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF). In its 19thyear, AIFF has steadily moved up the ranks of independent film festivals nationwide. For five days in mid-April, over 7,000 film lovers gather in downtown Ashland to watch more than 100 documentary, feature, and short films and hear from videographers from around the world. The Washington Post has called it “a dream you’ll never want to leave.” This year, Festival’s planners quietly worry that it may be a dream deferred. “We work so hard all year and then circumstances hurdle out of our control,” one volunteer sighed.
In one sense, though, Ashland has been preparing for a pathogen like the coronavirus for more than a century. Long before the World Health Organization declared in 1948 that “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” Ashland had a special relationship to wellness.
In the early 1900s, throngs of tourists would detrain at the Southern Pacific Railroad station at “A” Street in Ashland and head to one of the area’s forty known mineral springs to soak away a range of ills from sciatica and rheumatism to industrial life.
The best known, Jackson Hotsprings (still active today), helped cultivate Ashland’s reputation as a West Coast center for mineral-born rejuvenation, a reputation the region enjoyed until the 1940’s.
When the National Park Service began touting the benefits of hiking in the 1950s, Ashland, encircled by forests and mountains, was all in.
The warm sunshine on your face, the sound of the wind rushing through the trees overhead, and the soft earthy feel of the trail under your boots. Not only are these experiences enjoyable to have, but they’re good for you, too. (National Park Service, 1957)
Today there are 22 take-your-breath-away hiking trails within 15 miles of Ashland and the region’s running trails—rooted and rocky or pine needle soft— draw “ultra runners” preparing for 50- mile marathons. On our hikes in the woods behind us, Tony and I regularly encounter enthusiasts running up and down the steep trails. “Better them than us,” we say.
For those who prefer the gym, there are nine in Ashland, plus the YMCA with 9,000 members—almost half the town. There are 13 yoga studios and 5 tai chi instructors. When we first moved here, a friend who at 68 is an avid mountain biker warned me, “This is a land of life-long jocks and yogis.”
Back in the 1990s, “alternative” suggested hip and forward-thinking. In an article in The Atlantic in 2015, writer Jennie Rothenberg Gritze wrote:
There was alternative music and alternative energy; there were even alternative presidential candidates like Ross Perot and Ralph Nader. That was the decade when doctors started to realize just how many Americans were using alternative medicine, starting with a 1993 paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The paper reported that one in three Americans were using some kind of ‘unconventional therapy.’ Only 28 percent of them were telling their primary-care doctors about it.
Ashland is a mecca for alternative medicine. An internet search uncovers a community of naturopathic, allopathic, and homeopathic physicians; holistic and Shamanic practitioners; and physicians trained in functional and integrative medicine. (Please, don’t ask me for the details.) There are 69 licensed massage therapists, 40 chiropractors, 30 acupuncturists—and 5 marijuana dispensaries.
Life coaches (31 by internet count), spiritual healers, and herbalists round out the list. When a recurrence of my lifetime battle with insomnia sent me in search of therapist trained in cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia, I couldn’t find a single licensed practitioner in all of Oregon. Desperate, I tried a session of guided visualization that promised to help me sleep. It didn’t.
On the side of tradition, there are approximately 38 primary care doctors, 22 nurse practitioners, and 9 osteopaths.
And then, of course, there is healthy eating. The upscale Ashland Food Co-op notes:
From our humble beginnings in 1971 as a food-buying club to our current status as Southern Oregon’s first and only Certified Organic Retailer, over 10,000 members strong, the Ashland Food Co-op has been connecting our community to healthy, local food for decades. With passion, purpose, and a whole lot of love, we’re more than just a grocery store. We’re at the center of a movement. In fact, we’re on a mission to change the world.
On the south side of town, the funky, independently-owned Shop ‘n Kart offers a warehouse of organic foods (there’s no white rice among the Lotus brown rice), local products from hummus to blue cheese, and kombucha, olive oil, and raw honey bars.
During the growing season, Ashland hosts two weekly farmers’ markets which, according to USA Today, are among the best in the country.
Is this embrace of wellness enough to keep COVID-19 at bay? Probably not.
Recently I came across the wonderful poem by Danusha Laméris, “Small Kindnesses.” I can’t get it out of my head and heart. It reminds me of what we would lose if we must abandon our public spaces to this 21st century virus and shelter in place—the loss of a different kind of wellness.
“Small Kindnesses” by DanushaLaméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
From Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press, 2019).
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