Brook Burgess remembers the day Gov. Kim Reynolds recommended closing Iowa's schools for four weeks, just days after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
It was March 15, 2020. The total number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Iowa had just increased to 22 people.
“I was trying to just navigate what seemed like this new world that we were going to be living in, where things were changing every day," she recalled.
But the break gave Burgess, then a preschool teacher and a mother of three, a chance to pause. She bought a camera and started taking photos of her kids, rekindling her childhood love for photography. She watched more movies with her family. She read more books — fantasy, her favorite genre.
“With everything slowing down, I just felt all of my childhood inspirations from movies like The Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland, The Last Unicorn and folklore — all the stuff that I loved that was extremely suppressed, I guess, by being an adult and everyday worries and pressures and stuff — came back to the surface during such a dark and slow time," she said.
“We live in such a busy world. You don't always have time to read a book or to write poetry or to even sit down and listen to a record, and so having the time to do that just brought everything back," she added. "It just brought the magic back.”
Before long, Burgess had clients asking her for her whimsical photoshoots. She now operates a full-blown fantasy photo business, Violet Photography.
The pandemic shut down businesses, strained public health systems and upended lives. But for many Iowans, national shutdowns also created the space to try new things.
A speakeasy, a statewide journey — and a second chance
Some started new projects, like Urbandale resident Joe Hayhoe, who created a speakeasy in his basement that he's since shared with thousands of followers on TikTok.
"I joked around a little bit about building a bar in the basement, and then within two weeks, I was tearing down walls," he said.
For Sally Jacobsen Ortgies, it meant pursuing her dream of visiting all of Iowa's state park (93, by her count).
The timing was fitting, if not bittersweet — 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of Iowa's state park system. With many formal anniversary celebrations canceled, Ortgies and her husband decided to honor them in their own way.
“They were definitely places where my husband and I could go to just feel normal," Ortgies said. "I can't even describe the feeling, but it was exactly what we needed.”
They completed their goal in August 2021, but Ortgies wasn't finished. Now retired from her job as director of West Des Moines Parks and Recreation, she's about a quarter of the way through exploring all 1,850 of Iowa's county parks, too. She documents her adventures on her social media, where she calls herself the "Iowa Park Lady."
“I thought, ‘You know what? I've got all the time in the world.' And what better thing to do than to get out into Iowa's countryside?” she said.
She credits COVID-19 for her adventures.
“If it wasn't for the pandemic, my husband and I might have gone to a few parks — we had talked about doing all the state parks at some point in our lives — but I don't think we would have been as focused on it as we were. And if I wouldn't have done the state park thing, I don't think I would have had the idea to do this county park thing," she said. "It all ties back to the pandemic.”
Slowing down gave some creative Iowans the time to reconsider their lives and make positive change.
In 2015, performer JD Walter had his sights set on moving to the coast to pursue a career on Broadway, but fateful a car accident changed everything.
"I knew something shifted within me," he recalled.
Years later, a cognitive disability diagnosis explained his lingering memory issues. He was informed that his days as a performer were over. Devastated, he turned to alcohol, damaging his vocal cords in the process. He remembers defeat overwhelming him after watching videos he'd taken on his phone of his attempts to sing.
But Walter said when the pandemic forced the world to slow down, he started to view things more clearly. He turned to music therapy and made the decision to get sober. Slowly, he also started work to gain back his voice.
“For me, personally, it was the best moment that I could have ever asked for," he said. "I want to be fully here and aware, and I don't want something like alcohol, that was so easily accessible at that time, to be something that I'm not dealing with.”
On March 7, Walter will take the stage in a major singing role in Jesus Christ Superstar at the Des Moines Playhouse, his first performance since transforming his life.
"When that world slowed down, I feel like it gave a time for people go, 'Whoa. I've never been this still,'" he said. "I had to tune into myself and just be within myself and process feelings that I had. I'm dealing with my fears, I'm dealing with sadness and anger and all those emotions that you don't want to think about."
For Burgess, the uncertainty she felt five years ago has been replaced with a new confidence.
“I feel like I'm finally, five years later, I'm at a really good place," she said. "I have everything laid out, and it's just sort of known.”
