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On a clear, clear pre-dawn morning, the letters from Airbnb’s iconic sign across the Mississippi River light up methodically, one by one, spelling out the words.
g
love
embolden
Gray
wheat
grain b
Be the grain
Grain Bill
grain belt
Grain belt beer
Then the words pulse twice, highlighted against the fluorescent green and red light that traces the shape of the bottle cap, Mark is 83 years old In downtown Minneapolis.
Grain belt beer.
Since we are on the 13th floor we can see the sign without getting out of our bed.
When the sun reaches the horizon, the banner lights eventually go out. The rumble of vehicles in the street below signals the start of the day.
The sounds of the city come alive, as do we.
A few sips of coffee. We put on our walking shoes and layer to get ready to go out and repeat the walk we did on the same day exactly three years ago.
Photo by John Hatcher Heather Marie walks across the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis, retracing a walk we took regularly during the pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020.
Outside, we take the stairs to the path that follows the Mississippi River. There are patches of crusty ice and snow along the edges of the walkway. The wind is brisk and the sun is inches in the sky as we head east towards Stone Arch Bridge.
It is no coincidence that we are here on this day. We were returning home from a long weekend visiting friends in Iowa when we realized that during this same time period we had been sequestered in a loft apartment in the downtown Minneapolis Warehouse District during the onset of the global pandemic.
We were living in Vietnam where I was teaching as a Fulbright Scholar when the US State Department informed us that airports were closing all over the world; We were strongly encouraged to go home immediately, four months earlier than expected.
After three years it seemed fitting to stop and think about all that had happened in such a short period of time, so we found an apartment with sweeping views of the river and downtown and stayed the night.
The first thing that struck us on our walk this morning was how quiet it was. We make our way across the Stone Arch bridge and pass a handful of people: a young woman trying in vain to teach a new puppy how to behave; a couple of cyclists huddled against the cold; An old man shakes his head as he passes by.
On our morning walks in March 2020 the trails were bustling with activity. The city was closed. There were a few other options. You may go for a walk. But like bread-making, knitting and other activities people took up during the pandemic, walking seems to have become an afterthought.
We stopped halfway across the bridge and looked upstream at St. Anthony Falls. A pair of ducks flies overhead and descends awkwardly into the ponds at the foot of the falls. Looking to the west, we see traffic on the Hennepin Avenue Bridge, which appears light on a Monday morning. We wonder if there is a holiday we’re not aware of (there wasn’t).
Three years.
It feels like moments ago and for a lifetime.
Memory is hard stuff. It would be easy to look back on our time during lockdown with nostalgia, but it was uncertain and scary. We didn’t have a home to go back to in Duluth. We couldn’t see our family. And with no testing or vaccine options, we worry we might be exposed to COVID during our travels.
Most stores were closed and the line to get to the grocery store wrapped around the block.
We had no idea what to do or what would happen. The only thing we can do is go for a walk.
The epidemic will continue to kill 6,887,000 people so far And it has become part of the growing sense of turmoil on our troubled planet. After three years, many feel insecure and broken. Things happened that we could not have expected.
Courtesy of John Hatcher Heather Mary and John watch the moonrise on their wedding day from the large barn doors of their Barnum farm.
Oddly enough, for us, the past three years have brought many positive things into our personal lives.
We became grandparents in June of 2020.
We bought a 40-acre farm in Barnum, Minnesota, invested money and effort, and turned it into a vegetable farm that feeds hundreds of people every year.
We got married and celebrated with family and friends in a ceremony in the summer of 2022 on our farm that included some descendants of the original white settlers on that land.
I look across the water and try to think of why we have come back to this spot and what is important to remember on this memory.
I often find myself blocking out memories of the pandemic, pretending it never happened. But there are aspects of her that I never want to forget. In some ways, I think I learned from the experience.
Time from work and home has reminded me of what I value in my life and challenged me to think carefully about how I want to spend my remaining time.
The pandemic has helped me remember what matters and what is important.
And what is not.
Photo by John Hatcher A couple of selfies taken at the same place exactly three years apart makes it all what’s happened since the start of the global pandemic.
As we near the end of our walk, we cross the Hennepin Avenue Bridge right by the Grain Belt Beer sign. We pause to try to replicate a photo we took at that location three years ago: a self-portrait with a marker in the background.
Back in our room we look at the picture and realize we took the picture with the marker across from us from the last time we took it.
But there is no time to go back. It’s time to get out, and we need to move on.
John Hatcher and Heather Marie Bloom live in Barnum, Minnesota, where Bloom runs the Rising Phoenix Community Farm. Hatcher is Professor of Journalism at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
