The Great Stillness

So I’ve been calling our present stay-at-home reality the Great Hunkering (as in “hunker down”) but now I’m thinking it should be called The Great Stillness, at least in my neck of the woods. Things are quiet. The most people I see are on our Hike & Bike trail, and we keep distance from each other. Most are walking their dogs. In my last novel, The Bird Saviors, there was a virus outbreak based on the bird flu fears, named the Crow Flu (which the main characters resented, essentially because it seemed to blame birds). I didn’t use the term “pandemic” in the novel and didn’t think of it quite that way, and now I know what life in a pandemic is like. In the neighborhoods, it’s quiet. I realize city life would be quite different. The best comparison seems my Colorado home after a heavy snow.