Twenty-Twenty Hindsight 

IN JANUARY of this year, we headlined our column, “Twenty-Twenty Vision” and embarked on an optimistic rant about tackling challenges and charging forth into a bright future.

Holy bleeping bleep, did we blow it with that rosy prognostication.

Within weeks of that column hitting the street, news of a mysterious virus out of China began to circulate. By the end of January, it was starting to sound different from every other virus “scare” that had been let loose in this era of modern medicine, an era in which billboards everywhere reinforced the notion that cancer had been “outsmarted” and TV commercials urged us to ask our doctors about cures for everything from acid reflux to restless leg syndrome.

The first of March, we were conducting business as usual at the Houston Fishing Show. That’s when the real impact of the coronavirus began to spread, in terms of both public awareness and literal spreading. At the Fishing Show, people were lined up at lavatory sinks, washing their hands like hazardous waste crews, and the first sightings of surgical masks began to surface. Handshakes became awkward, then tentative, then abandoned altogether.

Before we knew it, we were in a full-on pandemic, the likes of which had not been experienced in a hundred years. Government ineptitude at virtually every level—combined with a false sense of security that had been fostered by generations of advances in medicine and technology—left us wide open for a national sucker punch.

One of our statements in that optimistic New Year column was a hope that this century’s Twenties would not spawn a depression as did the decade of the Twenties from the last century. We should have knocked on a pile of lumber on that one.

So now, looking in hindsight at the Year from Hell, it is understandable for anyone to be reluctant to turn and look ahead, to wonder what is in store for us in the next year.

Obviously, Covid-19 is still going to be with us in 2021, despite what we’re being told about miracle 7-day cures. We’re not in a TV medical drama where the star doctor struggles mightily for 40 minutes before discovering the exact serum needed to save humanity, right after the final commercial break. Like almost everything in the modern world, this crisis is extremely complex, and extracting ourselves from it is proving to be complicated and difficult.

Reality is hard, especially as our surroundings continue to spiral away from orderly and familiar relative stability. But this is our reality. It’s all we have. So there is no alternative but to look ahead, and trudge forward.

No matter what the next year brings—disappointments, delays, or failures on the vaccine front; or spectacular success and cures available in vending machines; or, if we’re lucky, something more realistic in between—life will go on. And the signs of life are still everywhere. In other columns we have written this year we have tried to point to a number of indications that things will improve once we are past this. The dramatic decline in fishing and hunting participation that has been recorded for years now has made an equally dramatic turnaround. Restrictions on travel and other activities have pushed large numbers of people back to more basic recreational pursuits. As a result, more people are buying boats, fishing gear, guns, and everything from camo to ATVs. Maybe this return to outdoor roots will stick, and will represent a renewed vigor in what had become a threatened lifestyle. Assuming things do return to a more normal pre-pandemic state and supply channels get back to capacity, we hope this exciting new demand holds and every corner of the outdoor world experiences a true and full renaissance.

  Beyond that, we’re not making any predictions, rosy or otherwise. The only thing we can know for sure is that whatever happens will be real. No amount of spin, denial or finger pointing will change the fact that what happens, happens, and we just have to deal with it and live with it.

One of the great things about our place in this reality, where fish bite, birds fly and game runs, is that we have an outlet that makes living with whatever happens a lot more tolerable.

E-mail Roy at rneves@fishgame.com and Ardia at aneves@fishgame.com

 

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