Washington state’s once-bustling border towns and islands fall silent, due to coronavirus pandemic

Sharp-eyed dwellers of Washington’s northwest corner could look skyward in recent weeks and see thousands of snow geese — winter residents of the nearby Skagit Valley — gracefully winging their way north in a migration old as time.

It was a welcome glimpse of seasonal business-as-usual — and a rare one. Most humans with designs on a northerly spring migration get stopped, cold, on roads or waters around Blaine, thanks to a virtual wall between the U.S. and Canada, the result of border restrictions imposed in March to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.