In dialogue: Katrina Niebergal & Andrew Wilson respond to the Call Centre prompt via a series of isolated segments from transcribed conversations.
4.
Quarantine. The time is going fast.
My routine is waking up early, going outside - either I go climb a mountain or I’m just outside on the deck - then breakfast, tea and reading. Then I do something like work, sewing, or working on a grant, or the residents permit stuff. Then after 7:30pm also going up a mountain, or going for a swim or something, because I just have to get out.
This where I’m from and I realised when walking through the woods the other day that I’ve known these woods for almost thirty years, it was my entire territory as a child.
Sounds amazing.
Ah, come on, you were out doing 5am rides recently.
That’s true. I could do it. I got a real sense at the beginning of the lockdown, when I started to see, to look in ways I’d hadn’t for a while. You can easily forget.
Yeah, you forget how to look at things. It’s even happening to me here already. When I first arrived, I was getting up and out at 5am -probably also jet-lag - out by 6am and up a mountain. But this is also my morning window.
So, the deal here is a self-imposed 14-day quarantine. They ask you a bunch of questions as you come through customs, you fill in these forms, and you also, within 48hrs need to call-in and give your information again. Then the public health service in each municipality will call you at any point during those two weeks.
To ensure you are where you said right?
Yeah, and if they cannot get hold of you they will send the police out. So, I’m waiting for this call from the feds.
Or the knock on the door from the police?
Exactly. But I reckon it’s not cheating it. All of these rules are in place for a reason but its also for the lowest common denominator, not everybody has a mountain right outside their house. So, they are not going off into the wilderness alone. Where there is no contact with humans anyway.
But even so, the jetlag has been wearing off and this morning I stayed in bed until 9am, and I have lost my window of being free. I reckon they are not going to phone before 8am. I’m taking a gamble, a $1000 gamble, each time. They said in customs up to one million dollars. (Laughs) but that is a very Canadian thing to do. And they say it to you with a super blank face:
“So you could be facing up to a million in fines”
Or five years in prison or something.
But actually, I think the going rate is $1000.
But you were talking about the potential, and not being able to see it anymore.
Last night I went for a ramble down the creek and found a Deer vertebrate. I think a Coyote had got it.
Shit, yeah. So, you’ll have proper wildlife there.
Yeah, there is a bear around. My mam saw it the other day when she was driving back up the mountain.
And I’ve been hanging out with deer. I can send you some video.
Comments