May 13, 2020

We have been more or less sheltering in place at our winter home in Patagonia, Arizona, for the past two and a half months. I use the qualifying term “more or less” because in this sparsely populated region there is ample room to go hiking, birding, and horseback riding without running into crowds, or even one other human being for that matter. This prevents our going stir-crazy, which I’m sure we would have done if we’d returned to Connecticut a week ago, as we’d planned before the pandemic struck. Back there, a severe lockdown is in effect, and for good reason: Fairfield County, Connecticut, our home county, had recorded 13,488 cases of the Covid19 Virus as of yesterday, with 1,046 deaths; here, in Santa Cruz County, 51 cases have been confirmed, with 0 deaths. That’s 0 as in none. To put a finer point on grim statistics, the number of confirmed cases in Fairfield County alone exceeds the total number in the entire state of Arizona (11,736), while the Arizona death count is “only” 562.

The picture may not be as rosy as those figures indicate. The Arizona Daily Star, published in Tucson, reported that a little over 150,000 people out of the state’s population of 7.3 million have been tested for the virus, giving it the lowest testing rate per-capita in the nation. And Santa Cruz County has the lowest rate of any of Arizona’s 15 counties. I don’t know why this is so. Arizona is a red state, and polls have consistently shown that the citizens of red states, as well as their governments, don’t take the pandemic as seriously as blue states. I don’t know why that is so, either. Maybe it’s because most red states are rural. Their comparatively low population densities result in fewer cases per-capita. At any rate, there probably are a lot of infected people statewide that we don’t know about. That could make Arizona’s modified re-opening from its modified lockdown dangerous. We’ll see if, two weeks to a month from now, hospitals and clinics become overwhelmed with the sick and the dying.

All that said, the evidence of my senses tells me that Leslie and I are better off here than back East. Patagonia, population 913, remains under some restrictions. Its one coffee shop, the Gathering Grounds, and its three eating and drinking establishments — the Wagon Wheel, the Wild Horse Saloon and Dining Room, and the Velvet Elvis Pizzeria — have been shuttered for weeks. The Wagon Wheel, which dates back to Patagonia’s rough-and-tumble past as a mining and cowboy town, serves take out (Leslie recommends the chicken chimichanga; my favorite is the tangy chicken chipotle). About a month ago, the town council passed a resolution mandating social distancing, among other things. Even when out of doors, no one is allowed to be within six feet of anyone else to whom they are no related. Violators, the ordinance states, will be warned by the town marshal (yes, we have a marshal, and he’s tall, like Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke) upon first offense; second offense carries a penalty of a $2,500 fine and up to six months in jail. I pointed out to my neighbor, a town councilman, that Patagonia doesn’t have a jail, has never had one, in fact. During its Old West days, drunks, rowdies, and other evildoers were chained to a large tree at the edge of town. Were I to get caught committing a second breach of the social distance law, I asked my neighbor, would I be chained to a tree for six months? He assured me I would not — I would be sent to the Santa Cruz County jail in Nogales, 18 miles to the south. From what I’ve heard about the county slammer, I think I’d take the tree.

For now, that’s the news from our high desert Woebegone.