Eden Richards

Aaron Rodgers has emerged from his “darkness retreat.” The Green Bay Packers star quarterback ended his four-day stay in an Ashland, Oregon facility, Sky Caves Dark Retreats.

Unconventional Rodgers went dark to assess where he is in his life at age 39. It’s probable that part of Rodgers’ assessment is determining whether he will return to the Packers or play elsewhere in 2023. ESPN reported that Rodgers spent the four days in a 300-square-foot room in a partially underground structure without light. Rodgers could turn on lights through the cabin’s “self-contained off-grid system to power the ventilation fans, propane hot water heater and lights occasionally used during the integration process,” according to the facility’s website. Sky Caves Retreats is a facility that offers guests an opportunity to spend time immersed in darkness. According to the facility’s website, there are three separate rooms. One is a “cob/strawbale cottage” and the other two are “hobbit” cottages built into the hillside and are fully buried in the Earth.”

The Super Bowl-winning Green Bay Packers quarterback recently announced his next step: a four-day darkness retreat to help him decide whether giving up the pigskin is his next best step. Because nobody wants to pull a Tom Brady fooled ya retirement switcheroo that appears to have cost the former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback one marriage to a fed-up wife.

Rodgers, a four-time MVP, is a man unafraid to make headlines for his interest in alternative healing modalities. You might remember he got in a wee spot of trouble during the pandemic for saying no to the COVID-19 vaccine and misleading people about his vaccination status, and yes to ayahuasca, an ancient plant medicine used for religious and medicinal purposes in South American countries that’s found a foothold in the U.S.

And now he’ll spend four days in a darkness retreat, another practice that goes back thousands of years in many spiritual traditions. Rodgers will spend 96 hours in a pitch-black environment. No phone, TV, books. A couple of meals delivered twice a day in such a way that allows in no light. And hopefully he’ll employ a support person to do daily check-ins to make sure he’s OK in all the ways: mentally, physically and spiritually.

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“I’ve had a number of friends who’ve done it and had some profound experiences,” he said on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “It’s something that’s been on my radar for a few years now, and I feel like it would be awesome to do regardless of where I was leaning after this season. It’s been on the calendar for months and months and months.”

Don’t worry too much about our grizzled protagonist during his time off-grid. He’ll be fine. He can always exit his living quarters if it becomes too much. And according to those with dark retreat …

Celebrities are fleeing urban coronavirus hotspots for quarantining in Wyoming, Montana, and other Western rural regions. Experts are criticizing this move as dangerous to those who live in those areas year-round. Fearing their relocation may cause added stress to an already severely limited healthcare infrastructure.

These include celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, and Kelly Clarkson to name a few.

“These moves have been a huge concern for us,” Alan Morgan, chief executive officer of  NRHA, told NBC News. “It’s such a bad idea for upper-income urban people to hunker down in these areas. It potentially places added pressure on a health care system that was for primary care and general surgery, not for pandemic surge response.”

Morgan said that as of Friday afternoon, there are more than 16,000 cases of coronavirus scattered across rural counties nationally. Hospitals in these areas have one to two ventilators on site on average, he said. More than half of the rural counties in the United States have no intensive care beds at all.

Celebs moving to the countryside

Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel were the most recent celebrities to come under fire for the phenomenon. Some have branded “disaster gentrification” after Timberlake recently revealed that the couple has settled into their home in the Yellowstone Club. It’s a 15,200-acre private community west of Gallatin County, to wait out the coronavirus outbreak. Kelly Clarkson has also decamped to her Montana ranch during the pandemic.

“To be honest, we thought the best way to kind of do our part was. We have a place in Montana and so, we came up here,” Timberlake said in an interview with SiriusXM Hits1 on Wednesday.

Travel from urban centers spreading coronavirus to rural areas

Gallatin County is among the top 10 rural counties with the highest reported COVID-19 cases, according to data obtained by NBC News from NRHA. In comparison to the surge of cases, there are currently eight ICU beds available in the country. There’s just one for every 2,141 residents aged 60+, according to Kaiser Health News.

“In Utah, in Colorado, all around the country, we’re hearing the same stories,” Morgan said. “People are moving into these understaffed, underfunded areas that are tinderboxes for the outbreak. Many of the populations in these communities are exactly those who are least equipped to get the virus. Basically older, sicker people with preexisting conditions who can’t afford to be exposed to it.”

Coronavirus Data

Jessica Carson, a research assistant public policy professor at the University of New Hampshire, recently conducted a rapid response project that appears to corroborate Morgan and the NRHA’s assessment that continued travel from those who do not live in rural communities is causing the spread of COVID-19.

After analyzing data from the New York Times, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service and the U.S. Census Bureau, Carson determined that the nation …