What have not changed are the basic needs of a full and healthy life in the active senior years around which this community was designed almost 25 years ago: nutrition, exercise, intellectual challenge, companionship and meaningful activities. With some ingenuity and resilience, we have been able to adapt so that we still find our lives healthy and satisfying.

On May 19, as the seriousness of the pandemic became clear, the board of the Mountain Meadows Owners Association called a town hall meeting of the community with most management staff members present to talk about what changes might be necessary in our life style. Little did we know that would be the last meeting of the community in the Mt Ashland Room, our largest gathering space, for some time to come. The following Monday, March 23, the governor of Oregon issued a state-wide shelter-in-place order for all but essential workers.

We were amazed and impressed at how fast our staff responded. By Tuesday evening the dining room and kitchen staff announced that the dining room would be closed. Starting with lunch Wednesday, the first regular meal of the week, residents would call in or email their food orders and all meals would now be delivered in the same manner that had been used for residents who had been unable to come to the dining room.

Within only a few days, the few glitches had been ironed out, and now the dining and kitchen staff is delivering an average of about 175 meals for every one of the five regular main meals each week, with meals arriving hot and ready to eat before 5 pm every evening and at noon on Sunday.

Anticipating closure of the Clubhouse, which meant no access to the library, residents were encouraged at the community meeting to check out a few extra books, which they did over the weekend, providing reading material for the interim. Now in late June, our Library Committee has checked in all of those books and will be reopening the library for limited hours each week under social-distancing rules so that residents can again take advantage of our excellent collection of books, CDs, and videos.

Since the closure, we haven’t been able to hold any of the 10-15 meetings that normally would be taking place each week in the Clubhouse, but many of us have gotten very adept at hosting and attending meetings online. Thank goodness for excellent internet service in Ashland. These online meetings have turned out to be reasonable substitutes for face-to-face meetings in the Clubhouse.

In addition to board and committee meetings, our bimonthly Chautauqua gatherings have gone to a weekly schedule with at least 20 residents gathering on the screen every Thursday afternoon to discuss current affairs and important issues, and a more social gathering is hosted by our resident services manager and Clubhouse receptionist every Wednesday morning to chat and share ideas about what we’re doing with our newfound spare time.

We do miss having access to the Fitness Center and Pool, but our Fitness manager is filling in admirably with a combination of exercise tips in the Weekly Update newsletter and bulletin, which most of us now receive online every Friday, online exercise sessions done using the same system as for regular meetings, and exercise sessions on Hunter Green in front of the Clubhouse nearly every morning.

But one of the most positive aspects of living in Mountain Meadows under these circumstances is our open campus of contiguous neighborhoods around our park and with easy access to open space nearby. For many of us, an early morning or evening walk has become a regular part of our routines, getting us out in the fresh air and often giving us an opportunity to stop and chat at a safe distance from friends we encounter on the trail past the community garden and up to the top of the hill or through North Mountain Park right next us.

Gardeners haven’t had to interrupt their routines at all, with the assigned raised beds of the Kitchen Creek Community Garden needing to be cleared and planted. Now, three months after the closure, those beds are thriving and the flowers and vegetables are a visual treat. In addition, our gardeners created a gathering place with properly distanced chairs and benches under the shade trees at the east end of the garden and invited all residents of the community to enjoy the space as a healthy and friendly alternative to staying inside alone, as many people in other regions must do these days.

But most of all, the companionship that comes from living with almost 300 other people who have shared interests and experiences has been very rewarding. The craftsman style of our homes is particularly appropriate now, as we can sit on our porches at home or walk along the sidewalks and chat with our neighbors without taking risks of being too close.

All of these measures, we must say, have not been particularly onerous, and in fact have given us a greater appreciation for everything we have. And all of this has paid off. Thanks in large part to the flexibility and responsiveness of the staff, our community leaders and our residents, there have been no reported cases of Covid-19 among our 285 residents in the three months since the closure. As progress is made on controlling and eventually preventing this disease, we can also expect that – though circumstances have been challenging – we will be able to go back to the best of the old while maintaining many new habits we’ve been acquiring at Mountain Meadows since closure.