50 years of social distancing experience雪山隱士的50年隔離生活

樊獻勇

比利·巴爾是科羅拉多州哥特鎮唯一的全職居民。近50年來，他一直保持社交距離，并就此給人們提出了一些建議。

Billy Barr is the only full time resident of Gothic， Colo. He has been social distancing for almost 50 years. He lives in an abandoned silver mine at nearly 10，000 feet in altitude in the Rocky Mountains. When he first got here， it was a relief for him to be on his own， but he thinks that s not necessarily what a healthy person does —isolating himself.

While Barr has been called a hermit（隱士）， he doesn t consider himself one. He occasionally interacts with skiers who pass through; he talks to his sister on the phone， and he works for the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory nearby， which gets flooded with scientists in the summer.

But the man has been living alone in a cabin in the mountains for many years， and in the winter months， he can go many days without seeing a soul. So staying home during the COVID 19 outbreak is no change for him. He comes into winter with almost all his food already in.

Here are several recommendations for the Billy Barr method of social distancing.

Keep track of something.

Each day， Barr tracks the weather. He started measuring snow levels in the 1970s， mostly because he was bored.

“Everything depends on the weather，” said Barr， who has skied through that “sideways” to talk on the phone from the laboratory. “It contro lled what I did and so I would write it all down.”

Keep a routine.

Barr starts early. He wakes up around 3：30 am or 4 am， and stays in bed until about 5 am.

“Up until a week or two ago， I would listen to the news every morning so that I could start every day either totally depressed or furious. That s always a good way to start the day，” he said. Now with the whole COVID， he just can t be that anymore. So he listens to old time radio instead.

Use movies as a mood adjuster.

“If I m really stressed I might watch an animated movie， something cute and funny like that takes my mind off it. If I m depressed， I can reverse that，” he said.

Do you enjoy living like a hermit like Billy Barr？ Why？ Do you have any other advice on social distancing amid the pandemic？