What a year it has been

It’s been a year this month since the world as we knew it changed.

Barb and I were on vacation in San Diego but raced home to Montana when Covid-19 hit the fan. Except for a brief foray into Wyoming last summer I haven’t been out of the state since.

My 33-year association with the Bozeman Chronicle ended that month when the paper dropped all of its columnists. My final column in the Chronicle, detailing our trip to California, is still displayed on the paper’s web site. The headline reads “Doing fine except for this feeling of dread.”

A reader at the time responded to the column calling it “depressing.”

I guess it was. But a lot of what we’ve been going through for the past year has been.

And a lot of it hasn’t.

The grandkids were able to come up to the lake and visit. I hunted more last fall than I have in years. We got a puppy. Barb and I both remain healthy.

Social distancing and avoiding crowds have been easier for us than for a lot of folks. We split our time between Phillips County, the second-largest county in the state with a population of just over 4,000, and Garfield County, the third-most sparsely populated county in the lower 48.

Despite the remoteness of where we live, I still worry about getting sick. Lately I’ve been experiencing some rather odd symptoms. Losing their sense of smell is a common complaint of Covid sufferers. I can still smell just fine but I have inexplicably lost my aversion to a few onerous tasks I used to abhor.

Years ago I’m sure I swore off sheetrock. Although I can hang it, tape it and mud it, I don’t like doing it.

Or at least I didn’t. Now, it seems, I do. Last week, in the middle of a construction project at the cabin, I caught myself actually enjoying the sheetrock end of things.

It was a disturbing thought, and my first reaction was “I must have Covid.”

However, after taking a quick sniff of my armpit I was reassured that my sense of smell remained intact.

Perhaps I’ve contracted one of the variants.

The end, however, appears to be in sight. I got my first vaccine this week, and Barb soon gets her second. There appears to be light -- or at least another piece of sheet rock -- at the end of the tunnel.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]