Marquette University Intimations Project

Isaac Anderson

Now is the winter of our discontent

With hopeless isolation comes no end

This bitter snow, the harbinger of loss

In the great madness of a frigid exile

It rarely snows in Portland. It is not uncommon for an entire season to pass without a single snowfall. Winters in Oregon, while rainy, usually do not go beyond late February. By March, the temperatures have risen, and it starts to become spring. Certainly, by early April, spring has come – it is sunny, and plants begin to bloom. That was the case for the winter of 2019 to 2020. There was no snow in November, or December, or January, or February. By March, the temperatures were rising, and it seemed as though we would go yet another year with a reliably mild winter. Then, on March 14^th, it snowed. It snowed is a way it rarely does, more like a Wisconsin winter than an Oregon one. While it rarely snows in Portland, when it does, it shuts the city down. Portland does not have the equipment to plow the streets and allow infrastructure and business to happen. So, because of the snow, we sat, we stayed home, we could not leave, we could not see our friends, or families, or coworkers – we were isolated. We could not go to the store, and even if we could have made it, all shops were shut down, all services were at a halt. It was as if the city, the world, had stopped.

It is helpful to note that the last day of school before the pandemic shutdown was March 13^th. At that point, there were a total of 30 cases in Oregon. We went into our extra week of spring break fully expecting to be back in school by April 1^st. We believed the pandemic would end just as all others had ended before. SARS, Ebola, these were things that existed in the far-away abstract, not something that could truly affect us. We believed that this would progress just as all viruses had in the past, that we would be clear by April. Even just entering the tunnel, we could see the light. We were so close, our cases were so low, surely this would pass quickly.

Then the snow came. The day before the snow fell, the President of the United States declared the COVID outbreak a national emergency. The day of the snow, the first death in Oregon was recorded. By March 17^th, three days after the snow fell, gatherings of more than 25 people were banned, and we were told we would be out of school until April 28^th. Finally, nine days after the snow fell, on March 23^rd, we went into complete lockdown.

The isolation that was felt during those few days of snow never left. The isolation brought on by the snow was a preview for the isolation to come. Our winter did not end in March. The pandemic was not over in April. Our winter of discontent did not end; we did not achieve a glorious summer. The original state of emergency, issued on March 8^th, has been extended until June 28^th, 2021. The winter, which we thought would end in March, or April at the worst, has never ended.