More Pandemic Nostalgia

 

8/25/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Since nostalgia is generally associated with pleasant memories of the past, it’s weird to think of a potentially traumatic, anxious time like the pre-vax pandemic era as nostalgic. And yet that’s exactly how I feel now about some walking routes that became overly familiar during that first year when we walked daily on the same streets. They feel like “going home again” after being away in the big city or something. I recently walked on First Avenue Northeast near Northgate, which runs parallel to Interstate 5, separated from the highway only by a noise-blocking wall. I enjoyed walking here during the pandemic because it was usually empty of both cars and pedestrians, so I could easily walk or sketch from the middle of the road.

Such was the case on a recent morning when I observed that nothing at all had changed in the past four years since I used to walk there regularly. Cars still park in awkward, non-linear ways. The same vintage Volvo I had sketched back then was still there.

On Northeast 91^st intersecting First Northeast, I noticed a tree had been drastically hacked to accommodate utility wires. Taking off all the limbs on one of two central trunk lines, it now looked like a tuning fork reaching for the sky.