That Thing with Feathers: Hope and Literature in a Time of Pandemic

People around the world are asked—or ordered—to stay home. But where is home? Where you are now? Where you’re told to go? Where you feel safety? THP author Stephen Trimble considers all of this and his own place of privilege amid Utah’s redrock country.

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“Do you feel like a local here?”

The coronavirus crisis has sent us all burrowing into our homes. My wife and I have retreated to our house in southern Utah. We’ll live here through these strange and perilous times—these quarantimes—because it’s the safest place we can be.

We are older, with retirement income to cover our needs, with no kids to home-school, with no jobs to lose, with none of the terror and desperation of those without resources. We’re fortunate, and we know it.

“Space has new meaning. We

talk to far-flung family and friends most every night, reaching out in video calls, across the country, across the globe.”