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Kevin Woster: It's Hard To Stay Home

Lori Walsh: South Dakotans have been asked to stay at home in order to slow the spread of coronavirus, protect the vulnerable, keep healthcare workers safe and at work and well supplied. But, nobody said that was going to be easy. For many people, staying at home is fraught with perils of its own. Kevin Woster writes about it online at sdpb.org/woster, and he joins us now on the phone from home, presumably. Kevin, are you at home?

Kevin Woster: I am, I am at home. The weather's, conducive to keeping me here, so I'm at home.

Lori Walsh: And we'll be clear, Kevin's not running out to, be irresponsible. So we're just, but-

Kevin Woster: I am definitely not.

Lori Walsh: But, staying at home can be a little bit, you know, stir-crazy for a lot of people. Tell me about what it's like for you.

Kevin Woster: Well, it drives me a little crazy, yeah, because I like to spend time at home and I spent a lot of time in my office, in my den, and reading in the kitchen and stuff, and then I usually go someplace, and I go to coffee with my buddies. I got a couple of groups and different people that like to sit and talk about politics and hunting and fishing and all kinds of stuff. I go to noon mass several times a week, three or four times, usually, along with Sunday, I have a family there, spiritual family, and the YMCA workouts. I say in my blog that I was dubbed the mayor of the Y by one of my friends who considers my workouts sometimes more conversational than physical. And then the Y, you get these patterns that you go into, you go from the Y to the library and see what's new and check out the periodicals and read the newspapers and see the people there.

All of that, it's not just the other stuff, like go to the basketball games, or going to concerts, or going to small group musical presentations or art shows. All that's off, and you find yourself here feeling generally safe. Although, we have some complications involving 18 grandkids, 14 of whom are in Rapid City, who are accustomed to showing up here. You know, kids from college age to one. So, those are interesting issues that have become more of a discussion point and an action point since we had our confirmed case, first of what I assume will be a number of confirmed cases here in the Black Hills.

Lori Walsh: Right. For so many people, this is an outdoor state. This is a place where people... there's hunting and fishing and hiking and climbing, and there's just a lot of sense that outdoors is home, outdoors is sheltering in place for a lot of people. When you do go out, these people have been asking those questions like, "What can I go out and do?" They're like, "Well, taking a walk is fine as long as you stay away from people." But, with more and more people taking a walk, is it getting crowded out there in some of your favorite places?

Kevin Woster: Well, I sit here and look out over the St Cloud street, which leads up two blocks to an entrance point in the trail system up in the Skyline Drive Nature, and I can tell you that the flow of people there is multiple times normal on a given day. When we went to Bear Butte, one of the grandsons who lived with us for 10 years, so we're having a little bit of trouble disconnecting from him. He's a middle schooler and probably shouldn't be coming over for a while. He lives with his mom now. And then we have a college age granddaughter living with us who flew back from the East coast, and so we're kind of keeping an idea on 14 days and all that kind of stuff.

So we're here and I watch people go by, but the four of us, my wife Mary and the two grandkids went to Bear Butte to hike, get out. Normally at Bear Butte you'd see five or six or seven people on the hike, up and back. I suppose we saw 25 or more. It even makes you a little nervous on a narrow trail where you're going almost elbow to elbow with people. We would wait for places where we'd step off the trail and let people coming up the trail move. And you're out in the outdoors with a wind, but you think, I don't know. [crosstalk 00:04:17]

Lori Walsh: Yeah, well they say if you walk through a virus cloud, it means someone could cough if they have it, three hours later, you could still... I mean, it's no joke, it's hard to... But it is kind of easy to forget when you do, you know, we've been talking a lot about turning off. Governor Kristi Noem even said yesterday, "Everybody take a breath and relax." But when you do that, it's also, it's shocking to shock yourself back into vigilance too. Sometimes when you take a breath and take a break, you can forget just how serious and how important it is to take those measures that are really out of... I mean, this is more than just how we normally wash our hands, let's be honest.

Kevin Woster: Yeah. Oh yeah. My hands are so dry, I don't know what to do with them. [inaudible] sanitized, and things, rubbing alcohol treatment, getting washed and plus we're washing counters so much more and sanitizing doorknobs and all this kind of stuff. And yeah, we've reached the point where family members, other than the one that lives with us, are kind of restricted in entering the house. My son, the doctor, has suggested the grandkids can come over on sunny days and play in the backyard and we can cut up some peanut butter sandwiches and feed them out there and generally not have them come in the house for a while. Even there, outside, try to keep up a reasonable distance.

Lori Walsh: One of the things that I've found on social media, as I watch so many of my friends now, because clearly we're working more, not less right now, so we're very, very busy. I see some of the people who are struggling with what to do with some of their free time and missing those social interactions and having virtual wine parties and stuff, and they're like, "I miss this group of friends." And I'm like, "I was never invited to those parties in the first place." And I'm like, "Have you all been meeting every week for wine and I didn't even know about it?" So I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Kevin Woster: I can feel your pain on that one.

Lori Walsh: Like I didn't know I missed it because I didn't do it. But apparently that's a thing. Maybe when this is all over, I'll want to be part of that thing.

Kevin Woster: Yeah. Yeah. And maybe you'll still be invited. Who knows?

Lori Walsh: Maybe I'll still be invited. Yeah.

Kevin Woster: Yesterday, day before yesterday, Tuesday when I was by myself in areas where there wasn't a busy trail, relatively speaking busy, down at Jewel Cave on a trail along Hell Canyon and down at Wind Cave down into Cold Brook Canyon trail, and then cast in a few jigs for walleyes unsuccessfully at Angostura Reservoir, that was just me in a whole day. As I say in the blog column, I went for hours without feeling anxious and without giving up what you need in the way of vigilance and responsibility. Oh my gosh, that was good for me to just to have a few hours off when I didn't think about COVID-19. Everything was normal and familiar and beautiful and exhilarating, and I needed that. I think we all need that and we have to find ways to get that.

Lori Walsh: Right. I remember writing about, after September 11th, taking Jane, my daughter was just a baby then. She was maybe, I don't know, she's born in March, so a few months old, not even a year, and after everything was happened, turning off the TV and taking her outside and taking her for a walk and just repeating to my... looking up the sky and saying, "There's no planes, there's no planes," like, "It's not happening here." Even though we didn't know what was going to happen next, and it was a time of huge anxiety, just to say, "At this moment, at this right moment, here I am with my daughter, we're breathing, we're safe." I think a lot of people are finding that as well, that they'd need to sit back and say, "You know, today we're not sick. Today, we're doing the things that we need to be doing. Today the hospital has enough supplies. Today we have enough food. Today we have our jobs." Or, "We don't have our jobs, but we have unemployment insurance coming our way," or whatnot, because the future right now, just if you get in your head, it can be, it can unravel you a little bit.

Kevin Woster: Oh yeah. Yeah. Even here in the house, Mary tries to remind me, "Be in the moment here. Try and be with us here." And because I get out and I watch too much cable news, and I listen to many radio reports sometimes on it, and I read too many stories online sometimes, you try to figure it out and you try to come to a conclusion and I can't. Then you finally just have to give up and say, "I have to read and I have to walk and I have to consider these things that are beyond this and believe that we will find them again." That's kind of what I was doing out in the cave tours, the trails and the places like that, because to clarify, there's no cave tours going on obviously, but I was touring with myself.

Lori Walsh: It seems like now is a perfect time to have a little more grace and forgiveness too. Earlier in the hour we talked about parenting and grandparenting and taking care of your parents and we're just, we can't do this perfectly. We never could. Now it's pretty obvious that we can't, so take a big exhale right now and realize that we're all humans having a human experience together all over the planet. Really. I mean not in isolation in that way.

Kevin Woster: Yeah. As I said on one of guys' social media page the other day, I said, "Can we, couldn't we just, I was so hoping that we could just stop this predictable political partisan back and forth, the bickering, the angry, the mean spirited. Can't we all just believe that we're all people with this one objective, and that's to stay away, stay safe, and to help each other, and to try and find resources?" Because they were arguing about, "This is all a show to get Trump..." I said, "I don't care about Trump. And I don't care about the election right now, and I don't care about any of that stuff, let's just keep people alive as much as we can and keep people healthy as much as we can and stop hating each other."

Can we not do that now?

Lori Walsh: Let's not do that now. Kevin Woster. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time and I just love the routine and the normalcy of talking to you here on a Thursday afternoon. We'll see you next time.

Kevin Woster: Me too. Thanks.

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