There’s nothing like a pandemic to make you question your most cherished values.

I’ve just returned from the grocery store, in a car, toting more than a dozen plastic bags full of stuff into the kitchen, where it will be wiped down and put away. Gone are the days of “European shopping,” when I wandered around town on foot, bus or bicycle, stopping here and there for a loaf of bread or a bottle of wine or something for supper. We had been making a dent in our plastic bag collection, but now bags of bags sit on the shelf, next to the reusable ones we’re not allowed to re-use.

Regular readers know I’m one of the most ardent advocates for public transportation in the greater Bangor area, but I haven’t been on a bus in over a month. It’s nice to see fewer cars on the streets, and to ride the bicycle on warm days, un-harassed by impatient drivers. But I wonder when I’ll next feel comfortable sitting beside a stranger on a public bus.

Every one of my writer friends seems to be keeping a quarantine journal of sorts. Many of my musical friends are posting videos of themselves making music and holding electronic gatherings. I’m writing less and reading more. I’ve picked up the dense history of the Balkans that I started reading last spring in Bulgaria (I’m up to the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire). I’m listening to a great deal of Bob Dylan.

Maybe I just don’t have a lot to say that hasn’t been said already. Perhaps the break from public life is a good reason to go full-bore introvert, which is often my first impulse anyway. This intermission might be an opportune time for observation, reflection, perhaps even reassessment.

We’ve been taking Sunday drives, from Bangor to the rockbound coast, two weeks in a row now. Aside from strategic trips to the grocery store, it’s almost the only time Lisa’s car leaves the house. The drives are therapeutic. We pack a picnic lunch and stay away from people. We eat on the shore if it’s warm enough. There are worse places than Maine to be marooned in.

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I was raised in the country by parents who fled the city. Most of my adult life has been a rapprochement with in-town life. I’ve lived in burgs of a few hundred and a few million, and now I’ve settled into a middle ground in the tens of thousands. It seems counter-intuitive but it’s true: cities are better for the environment. One’s carbon footprint is smaller in Philadelphia than in Passadumkeag, smaller in Bangor than in Blue Hill. But these days the idea of a cabin in the woods looks pretty good.

I think I first realized the virus was serious when the sports leagues shut down. There’s a ton of money in professional sports, and its owners wouldn’t close up shop for nothing. Ditto the concert venues, bowling alleys, restaurants and bars and on and on. Somebody knew what was happening here, Mr. Jones.

 I’m a little surprised by this, but I don’t miss professional sports. Though I’ve drifted away from basketball and made a conscious decision not to watch football, I’ll watch a baseball or hockey game on TV. I’ll check in on the Red Sox and dip into the Stanley Cup playoffs. Before the virus hit, we’d been planning a weekend trip, by bus and/or train, to Boston. I’ve never been to a Bruins game. Tickets were two hundred bucks per person in the cheap seats. Who is going to these games, I wondered, at $200 a pop? I passed. I can see the Maine Black Bears for a tenth the cost and 90 percent of the value. Some of those kids will turn pro, and I can say I knew them when.

So I’m already a little soured on professional sports for pricing themselves out of the budget of the average person – and then along comes the coronavirus to show us all how unessential the whole show is. Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad I lived to see the Red Sox win (and I fear I’ve lived to see the Cubs usher in the apocalypse) but I don’t miss baseball as much as I thought I would. If this sounds like heresy, well, I guess I’m still miffed about the Mookie Betts trade.

I don’t miss the frantic way of life that greeted me when I returned from abroad last year. Until I lived outside the United States, I never noticed how hurried the average American life is. We’re obsessed with work, and when we’re not working, we have to be doing something. Although it can’t last, the respite from all the rushing around is welcome.

The Earth thinks so, too. Pollution levels are down in urban areas around the world. Much of that is due to reduced driving. The irony is that people are using their cars less but need them more: for that trip to the store, to the hospital, or down a country road. Cars are the ultimate in social distancing. Mainers were doing it long before the coronavirus, carrying on window-to-window conversations at rural crossroads.

But I still don’t want to own a car. Public transportation will bounce back and expand, even in Maine. Car rental places will re-open. Taxis will become trustworthy again. The weather is getting better for bicycling.

Still, it’s alarming to see how fragile the whole infrastructure is. A car and a full tank of gas can be a comfort when it all comes crashing down.

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Distancing ourselves from one another to avoid an infectious disease may engender some unexpected side benefits. Perhaps it will afford us the opportunity to approach delicate subjects wearing gloves and wary of infection.

I’ve tried hard to keep partisan politics out of this blog. My effort to reduce by one the number of cars in the world seems to me less a political stance than a personal decision. But friends have told me that the act of renouncing car ownership in 21^st-century Maine makes me an activist.

To which I say: nonsense. Thousands of people don’t own cars because they can’t afford one. But it doesn’t follow that they all want to own a car, or that the rest of us should support a status quo in which car ownership is preferable to all possible alternatives. I do know that I was a lot more broke when I owned cars than I am now. If more people can find encouragement and reward in this chosen lifestyle, well, I think Maine, the United States, and the world would be happier and better places to live.

Most of my friends own cars. If I constantly castigated them for it, many of them would not be my friends for much longer. Twenty-four hour availability of a motor vehicle seems like a necessity to them. I know. I was there once.

What makes me an activist is that I write about the Late Automobile Age, and I sometimes show up at City Hall to lobby for policies that will make it easier for people to shed their cars: later bus hours, bicycle infrastructure, location of essential services in central areas or along bus routes. Why must we fight political battles over such sensible goals?

But if you want to stir up political passion in an otherwise apathetic population, challenge their perceived right to widespread free parking and cheap gas. The howls of protest will be heard from here to Venezuela.

Something like fifty percent of carbon emissions in the United States come from motor vehicles. Electric cars and hybrids mitigate the problem, but even they help to perpetuate a culture of driving that encourages consumptive land-use practices. A parking lot is still more damaging to the ecosystem than a bus.

It makes sense, for many reasons, to reduce the number of cars on American roads. But that means that some individuals must give up their cars. Fourteen years ago, I made the decision to be one of them. I was in a decent position to do so: my kids were grown, and I had a job that I could get to and from by bus. I was used to doing certain things by car, but I could make adjustments. Still, I wasn’t sure I could do it, and there was a period of transition. I rented a car from time to time, and still do. I accepted rides from friends who admired my new lifestyle but were unable to adopt it themselves.

Appeals to altruism only go so far. Economic self-interest is also a good reason to question the conventional wisdom that we all need cars. The upsides of renouncing individual car ownership become apparent within a few months. That’s how long it took me to realize the financial savings, the health benefits of walking and bicycling, and the absence of aggravations, from trolling for parking to rude behavior of other drivers.

My environmentalism is more instinctive than systematic. I’m appalled by wanton littering, and by industrial pollution of the air we breathe and the water we drink. I don’t want to look out at Penobscot Bay and see oil platforms. But I use oil to heat my house. In ordinary times, I’m an ardent advocate for public transportation. But now that we’re all self-quarantining to slow the spread of the coronavirus, I’m a little leery about getting on a public bus. I hope this is temporary.

I should be a vegetarian. The carbon footprint of industrial meat is at least as bad as that of motor vehicles. But I still have my driver’s license, and I’ve been known to eat a burger from time to time. One thing I don’t do is use the drive thru windows at fast-food restaurants. I avoid those eateries in the same way I avoid cars. But that doesn’t make me morally superior to anyone else.

I distrust politicians who take absolutist positions on complicated issues. We yearn for simple answers, as we prefer creation myths to more plausible explanations of gradual evolution. Baseball wasn’t invented by Abner Doubleday on a sunny spring afternoon in Cooperstown, New York; it evolved from British stick and ball games played by working class people who didn’t have the leisure time for cricket. The modern car culture evolved from a desire for privacy in public and the freedom to travel on one’s own schedule, along with government subsidies for the manufacture and sales of cars.

It’s not a perfect world, but it’s the one we’ve got. Changing it requires time, patience, and the willingness to accept partial victories and build on them.

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