ASHEVILLE - A couple of weeks into working at home after the Citizen Times office closed to slow coronavirus spread, I was feeling the claustrophobic fits and starts of cabin-fever craziness.

I am, after all, the outdoors reporter. I needed a serious hit of oak trees. Of roots and dirt under my boots. Of vitamin D streaming through the just-blooming dogwood leaves.

So my sister I and jumped on the Blue Ridge Parkway for a hike. A short one, close to home, where I was sure we’d be able to social distance properly.

It was one of the worst hikes of my life.

Within minutes we ran into friends who wanted to stop and chat. Then we hit narrow, single-track sections where we had to jump off trail quickly as people and their dogs approached us, oblivious to the CDC's “keep-a-6-foot-distance” rule.

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I am mostly deaf and can’t hear people approaching from behind. Runners and faster hikers came up behind us without warning, passing us with barely 6 inches, much less 6 feet distance.

My beautiful refuge, my place of calmness and escape from the world's woes, had become a boobie-trapped, fear-of-flying-COVID-19-nose-droplets hell. I haven’t been on a trail since.

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In the last 20 years I've made my living writing about WNC environment and outdoor recreation issues for the Citizen Times. I’m a former National Park Service ranger. I wrote a hiking guide.

To the point, there’s no arguing that I love the outdoors, and the parkway and the Smokies and our state and national parks and forests, the N.C. Arboretum, French Broad River Park, the Botanical Gardens at Asheville.

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And I’m missing them all desperately. My outdoor time is now limited to my front porch and walking or running around my block. I am immune-compromised so my social life consists of waving to neighbors, virtual cocktail parties and food drops from friends.

In short, it sucks.

But I’m not complaining about the lack of trees and waterfalls in my life. There is a time and place for everything.

A global pandemic that has now insidiously killed 122,000 people worldwide, more than 24,000 in the U.S., is not the time to be traveling the parkway to further crowd the trails at Graveyard Fields and Craggy Gardens, to throw fast food trash around overflowing garbage cans and use the trails for human waste receptacles since all the parkway and national forest visitor centers and bathrooms are closed.

These have all been problems confirmed by the parkway and the U.S. Forest Service. Visitation and calls for help – from lost dogs to backcountry rescues to motor vehicle accidents – are all on the rise. Vandalism, resource destruction and illegal camping is rampant in the Pisgah National Forest.

This is putting those essential workers – maintenance staff who must clean up your trash and filth, emergency first responders and law enforcement rangers - at increased risk to exposure of coronavirus and bringing it home to their families.

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Neither is it a time to jump into a van with a posse of friends you don’t live with and ride or hike the trails of Bent Creek and Pisgah National Forest.

According to the CDC, coronavirus spreads between people close together through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks, and can be spread by people who are not showing symptoms. It is also spread when a person touches contaminated surfaces or objects and then touches their mouth, nose or eyes.

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A recent Belgian-Dutch study found that when someone during a run or bike breathes, sneezes or coughs, those particles stay behind in the air, creating a slip-stream of cloud of droplets for the person behind you. It suggests the 6-foot distance runners should be increased to 33 feet and for fast cyclists, 66 feet.

Earth Day and giving the environment time to breathe

I know, it’s spring, it’s warm, it’s sunny, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, April 22, is nearly upon us. In WNC we would normally be attending Earth-centered festivities, neighborhood and river cleanups, getting rid of trash at Asheville Greenworks’ signature Hard 2 Recycle downtown, taking guided wildflower and bird walks through the state parks and N.C. Arboretum, running after Easter eggs on the Biltmore Estate grounds.

But public-safety-minded leaders in city, county and state government have issued stay-at-home orders to flatten the curve and prevent or at least slow the hell that is enveloping New York City, Boston. Louisiana, Miami and Detroit.

More than half the country's 419 national parks, including Great Smoky Mountains National Park, are closed. While some trailheads in Pisgah and Nantahala national forests, the Appalachian and Mountains-to-Sea Trail and the parkway are closed, most are open. In concerning mixed messages, some agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service and parkway, are practically begging people to stay home.

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“Outdoor recreation can be beneficial for your health but must be practiced safely. We recommend exercising close to your home and complying with local and state guidance for not traveling for your recreation needs. Stay safe,” read USFS and parkway Facebook posts, with alternative options such as looking through photos of past trips.

Even so, many on social media are claiming “a right” to use Bent Creek and the Blue Ridge Parkway, without which they might go insane.

It smacks of privilege to me. Every taxpayer in the country pays for these federal lands – that means people in New York, Michigan, Florida and California – even though they don’t get to use them as much as we (locals) do. But they’re coming now. The forests and parkway are busier than ever, with borders open to any and all, crossing state lines, possibly carrying the coronavirus.

To think only folks from Fairview and South Asheville are recreating on these lands is naïve.

Instead we should be feeling sorry for the family of George Lloyd Lamb, a father, grandfather and great-grandfather, who was the first person in Buncombe County to die from COVID-19. Or the family of the military veteran who died April 9 of the disease at the Charles George VA Medical Center. Or the 74 people in North Carolina who have died so far.

We should worry for the emergency responders, including law enforcement rangers on the parkway and the national forests, in local sheriffs’ departments and the EMS workers, who have to come into less-than-6-foot contact with people who are in car accidents, or get themselves lost in the woods, or fall off cliffs and waterfalls, increasing the emergency workers’ risk of coronavirus infection.

Not the time for vacationing, hiking, backpacking

As a native New Yorker, I feel gut-twisting sorrow for the people of New York City. Read legitimate news sources – the Citizen Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post – all providing free coronavirus coverage, to see the apocalypse that is taking place in that city, with more than 92,000 people testing positive and almost 7,500 who have already died. That’s more than twice the number of lives lost in 9/11.

Feel sorry for the NYC nurses, doctors and cleaning staffs who don’t have enough PPE to protect themselves and their families, yet continue to do their jobs to save others’ lives.

I am terrified for my family, who are all trapped inside the city’s borders, without porches or terraces or woods nearby.

For my mom, who has heart disease and lives on the 24th floor of a Bronx apartment building. She hasn’t been able set foot outside in months. She cannot ride the elevator because there’s no way to stay 6 feet apart from others.

For my sister-in-law who has been working double shifts in a blood lab at an NYC hospital where so many people have died, the morgue is overflowing and refrigerated trucks normally used for food are holding bodies until space frees up.

Instead of whining, we could use more people with ingenuity and compassion like Kitsbow, SylvanSport and Industry Nine, outdoor gear manufacturers transforming their factories into making PPE.

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Those making face masks on their own sewing machines, those contributing to the One Buncombe relief fund and helping to support displaced Asheville restaurant workers.

Sandra Marra, president and CEO of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, has been sounding the alarm about the dangers of continuing to move carefree through our parks and forests.

On March 17 she called for thru-hikers of the 2,190-mile trail to postpone their treks, and if they had started, to get off the trail. She even said no one should even be day hiking.

“Unless you’re an essential person keeping the grocery stores open or on the front lines of the medical community, stay home,” she told me recently.

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“Not go for a day hike, not go for a drive and buy gas. Stay home and do what you can to help the people who are on the front lines stay safe,” she said.

I field calls and emails every day from people with questions about where they can and can’t go outdoors, or berating me for writing about outdoors areas that are closed, and from people who are scared for their lives because they must continue working in places swarming with visitors.

I’d like us to all take a deep breath.

To realize how lucky we are to live in this spectacular place amid the Blue Ridge mountains, some of the oldest in the world, which will still be standing when this coronavirus insanity passes.

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Maybe mama nature is telling us something this Earth Day. She’s been suffering so long from global warming and deforestation and flooding, dirty air and polluted water, wildlife extinction, wildfires and climate change. Maybe our Earth needs a break from fossil fuel burning and rampant tree removal and yes, even hikers and bikers, for just a little while, to heal.

The outdoors might seem to be essential, and it is, but we can get fresh air and sunshine in our neighborhoods. At this time, what is actually essential is securing enough PPE and ventilators, washing our hands, wearing face masks and safely sanitizing our groceries and shoes before bringing them indoors.

And staying home. That’s how this outdoors girl is riding out the pandemic. I hope I didn’t survive the nightmare of breast cancer and hearing loss to succumb to coronavirus through others’ selfish actions. Right now I am also home with a non-coronavirus disability that will keep me from working at all for a while.

Let’s think not just of our own needs this Easter and Earth Day season but of our neighbors. Let’s enjoy the nature in our neighborhoods and watch the birds and bears in our backyards, so we can flatten this curve and come out alive.

And when this passes, we can go play in our mountains. Because they will still be here, but they will be no fun if we’re dead.

This is the opinion of Karen Chávez, an award-winning outdoors and environment reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times and USA TODAY Network. She is the author of "Best Hikes with Dogs: North Carolina," and is a former National Park Service ranger.

Reach me: KChavez@CitizenTimes.com or on Twitter @KarenChavezACT

Read more outdoors news: www.citizen-times.com/outdoors