One of the wildest things that I learned about myself since we began camping in summer 2020, is what 2020 has done to completely change who I am. Up until February of 2020, I was quite the social butterfly. Despite being an introvert, I have passed as an extrovert for most of my life because I feed off of interactions with people.
I initiated conversations whenever I was able and loved nothing more than a deep conversation with a perfect stranger. I’ve been hugged at the end of several flights and have traded contact info with my drivers at the end of an Uber ride. I’ve had some of the best, most real discussions with colleagues and they’ve become like family.
And then…
In the spring of 2020 when we all started staying home, I thought it would be a nice time to stay home and recharge. Each of those interactions, despite the joy they brought me, also completely drained me. Both mentally and physically, I would often return home from work trips and sleep through the weekend in what I call my charging dock, my bed. So despite being quite ill with Covid and the aftermath, I knew the ugliness would be over in no time and I’d be back at it, a busy bee.
We know what happened. It never ended. I never got to go back out there. Like all of us, I loved the Zoom parties but they got old quickly. I was able to talk to colleagues but that was also on Zoom. And then I was forced to stop working which means that my social circle dropped to three, my husband, son, and mother. They are all fantastic company so I stopped missing other people. And then I started having anxiety about even speaking to other people. I had situationally-induced social anxiety.
I didn’t even realize fully what had happened until we started camping this summer. When other campers passed our site, I’d turn around or pretend not to see them because I was terrified of conversation. My husband pushed me a couple of times to get out of my comfort zone and talk to other campers, but it terrified me every time.
As it turned out, when I listened to him I met some of the coolest people. People I would never have met in my new life. There was a man and his daughter who were dropped onto the Pacific Crest Trail and planned to hike a hundred miles or more, living mostly off the land.
On the PCT there is something called “trail magic”. It’s when random people just offer kindness, help, or supplies to these people who haven’t slept in a bed or eaten hot food in some time. We saw him and thought he must a PCT hiker because he had nothing but a backpack and a tent. We invited him over for a beer and a burger because that’s what you do for these hikers.
The thing is, they blessed me more than we could have blessed them. He and his daughter came over to our camp and hung out and we had an amazing conversation. We talked about business, their hike, and even mental health. He rather quietly let drop that he had been struggling with his mental health lately and that it was new for him. He was an apparently successful entrepreneur in the tech space and had managed life fine until recently.
It gave me a chance to be vulnerable as well and talk about my own struggle and what I’ve learned and done to manage it in the past. He explained that he had been hesitant to get the vaccine but that his family in India were all very ill with Covid and had no access to it so he realized how important it was.
We talked about camping and hiking and Thomas told him what to expect from the section of trail they were heading out on the next morning. Just a beer and a burger with new friends…like the old days.
In the current political environment, it’s easy to forget about the America that we love. It’s easy to see the anger and violence, everywhere from a coffee shop to a grocery store to a school board meeting. I certainly am more hesitant to meet new people than I was pre-Covid because I’ve watched people in my community change before my eyes in a matter of two years.
We start to generalize the people in huge swaths of the country and avoid them at all costs. What I discovered with our campcation in 2021, is that if we meet face to face in the great wild world, the majority of us are still kind to each other. I have met and gotten to know people that I would have never met in my Covid-induced, self-imposed small community, and quite frankly, I needed that reminder desperately.
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