Shelter in Place

KATHRYN JONES

April 11, 2020

We call it the Middle of Nowhere, 

the Beautiful Oblivion, or just “the ranch,” 

although it’s not a ranch by Texas standards;

only 122 acres or so, mostly useless,

limestone ledges and hills consumed 

by mountain cedar and prickly pear, 

crawling with rattlesnakes and fire ants;

eight miles south of the nearest town, 

a mile off the highway on a rough road,

bumping, winding, dipping, climbing

to a ridgetop – our place.   

Why do you want to live way out there, 

our city friends asked when we moved to the ranch. 

No neighbors to help you, no cafes, no bars, 

no cinema, no concerts, nothing to do.

You’re lucky to live way out there,

they say now in the post-virus world. 

No neighbors to infect you, no cafes, no bars – 

they’re all closed, anyway. 

We hear the fear in their voices when they call,

afraid of what they see and what they cannot 

as they follow orders to shelter in place. 

Working from home leaves us more time now;

we hunt fossils on our ancient beach

surrounded by a sea of bluebonnets, 

or watch the aerial jousting of hummingbirds 

around the flutes of coral honeysuckle.

What would it be like not to see the sky,

or witness the ritual of day beginning and ending,

the sun sinking and catching the clouds on fire,

night extinguishing them, then flipping a switch

to turn on all the lights in the heavens.

We take solace in nature’s order as we shelter – in place.

KATHRYN JONES is a longtime journalist, essayist, author, and teacher. A regular contributor to The New York Times and  a contributing editor and former writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine, her essays have been published in Texas Monthly and in two anthologies, A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, (University Press of Kentucky, 2019), and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2016 ). She currently teaches journalism at Tarleton State University and is finishing a biography of Ben Johnson, the Academy Award-winning actor (The Last Picture Show, The Wild Bunch) and world champion rodeo cowboy, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.