As I traveled through Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, the pandemic effects that I’d seen in New York earlier in the spring started to pop up out west. As I was getting ready to cross from El Paso into New Mexico, I faced an imminent travel ban for everyone who had been in high risk states — I’d been in a few. While I’d encountered a number of people who thought I was a potential typhoid Mary because I wasn’t confined to my home, this was the first state-sanctioned judgement I’d encountered. I believed — though the medical science wasn’t 100 percent proved — that I was immune. The nurse at Mt. Sinai, where I’d been tested and found to have high antibodies to coronavirus, told me I was immune, though she couldn’t say for how long. Typical of my personality, I chose to believe what I believed, and went ahead and crossed into Roswell, which was empty of pedestrians. The restaurants and stores were shuttered. I share this video because I think it highlights the quandaries we all faced regarding this virus. And it shows how much things have changed.
I had constant interior conversations about the ethics of my virus road trip -- in retrospect, my worries seem quaint
Story No. 15 from my journey in the early pandemic. 6 am, Gardner Hotel, El Paso, Texas, June 26, 2020. Cormac McCarthy lived at times in this old hotel. The interior was straight out of his books.
Jan 27, 2025

Everlands, by Stephen's People
Surprising stories, videos and photographs from a 35,000 mile journey into the heart of the American pandemic, beginning in June 2020.
Surprising stories, videos and photographs from a 35,000 mile journey into the heart of the American pandemic, beginning in June 2020. Listen on
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