dog walk wake-up call
My dog and I found no parking at our desired trail head today, not unusual except that it’s a weekday, but there are only a handful of parking spots on any day. Instead we parked in the nearby neighborhood and walked onto the campus of the local community college which has a nice trail with equally stunning views. We don’t go here often and haven’t been in quite awhile, but I knew the campus would still be empty because of the pandemic.
Wrong. As we walked toward the campus a steady stream of cars were exiting. This seemed odd. Could they be conducting classes again? As we entered the campus I noticed more than the usual number of security vehicles and security personnel walking around. Once on the campus I could see a long line of cars, actually several long lines of cars neatly organized next to each other, waiting. Some of the security personnel had clipboards. I didn’t see any signs saying what this was about and I couldn’t see what they were waiting for, but it dawned on me that this campus must be a mass vaccination site that I haven’t heard about yet. Fantastic, I thought. This effort has really stepped up lately. I walked my dog by some of the cars to get to our trail and didn’t think much more about it. The stunning views soon grabbed my attention.
The trail led us back to the other side of the campus. There were no car lines here, but a few were still driving down the road toward the lines which I could no longer see because of the buildings in between us and them. As I crossed the road to continue our walk on the sidewalk I could see a temporary sign with an arrow telling the cars where to go. But it didn’t say “To Vaccinations”. It said “To Food Distribution”. A wave of grief rushed through my body. All of a sudden it was like I was standing in the middle of a disaster movie. These hundreds of cars on this sprawling empty campus were waiting for free food as the world around us was collapsing, or so it seemed to me at that moment. I wasn’t really surprised. I’m sure you’ve seen news reports showing this very thing. But it was that cold slap in the face of seeing it up close that hammered the reality of it right into my core. I wanted to cry.
Now I needed to see where this food was being distributed since I saw no indication of it at the start. I took my dog on a short-cut through the middle of the campus. Sure enough, if we had taken a left turn instead of a right turn at the start we would have walked right by the big semi-truck being offloaded with food into the trunks of cars. But it was now 45 minutes or so later and the hundreds of cars were mostly gone. Only a few remained. The trailer looked empty. The food distribution was over, and I could only guess that many of those cars we walked by at the start did not get any food.
When we got back to our car I sat there for a moment, pulled out my phone and looked for information on what I just saw. It’s a once a week event that’s only open for a couple of hours. I wanted to volunteer. Their web site said no. I have a medical condition that puts me at risk. I’d already donated money. It never seems like enough. This has been going on for 10 months now. I’ve been very lucky. So far.