All of a sudden, it seems everything is off-limits. With no high school sports for three weeks — and who knows for however long after that — I am at loose ends.

As of this week, spring officially arrives. While it’s pretty clear we will be dealing with the effects of the virus for the foreseeable future, I’m putting forth in solitude, preparing my boat for the season and launching my lobster traps into the still-cold waters.

Halfway through March, chipmunks are up for good, it would seem. I see ours almost every morning running about, looking hale and sassy.

Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright and poet who won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1986, once said that “art is solace, art is vision,” and while the context of that sentiment isn’t readily available, one could imagine it being said during a time of strife.