A Time to Plan, and a Time to Let Go
Taking the Lessons of COVID on the Road
I can feel the familiar excitement and anxiety bubbling up as I take my pen and start my packing list. I'm referring to the weather forecast for the next 10 days as I decide what to bring, and I'm carefully updating my Google Doc with the reservation numbers, travel times, and sights to see on my drive from Etna, New Hampshire, to Nashville, Tennessee.
This drive is symbolic, for me, like a "light at the end of the tunnel" trip after a long pause from traveling during COVID. I had my second shot on April 15 and by the time I leave, I will have satisfied the recommended 14 days after to meet the criteria for being fully vaccinated. Along the drive from New Hampshire to Nashville, I will see friends from college and graduate school that I haven't seen in years (including staying with one friend who I haven't seen since 2007!!) and visit four East Coast national parks that I have never explored. My trip will culminate in Nashville, where I will celebrate the anniversary of my friends Steph and Charles and meet their new baby, Charles Jr!
There is so much to look forward to. I moved home to the East Coast from California during the pandemic. It was hard to reconnect with old friends because of the cold weather and the raging COVID numbers. Having just left behind four years of working as a high school principal, I was worried about whether I would be able to get my business off the ground, where I would live, how I would get health insurance. With many of those questions solved by time, trust, and the forced introspection of COVID, my spirit is ready for a trip, as is my immune system and the natural world blooming around us.
As I print my permit for backpacking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I am reminded of how, when I was starting my 29th year, I set a goal of visiting 30 national parks by the time I turned 30. Considering how big our country is, this was an ambitious goal. It was fun to try to achieve it, and it got me focused on planning trips and researching places I might not have had on my radar otherwise. But because of the strict schedule I was on, I felt like I had to get the planning down to the minute in order to fit it all in. Take, for example, my first solo backpacking trip, through the Grand Canyon. I went on Easter weekend, flying out Thursday night, hiking in Good Friday, walking all Saturday, and on Sunday trekking out 6 miles, driving the 3.5 hours back to Phoenix, and flying home to SFO all in time to pack my lunch for Monday at school. All those pieces had to be perfectly timed, so I researched the heck out of my trip to make sure I'd be able to fit everything in.
As I reach for my familiar backpacking checklist, I find it is all there waiting for me. The backpack, hammock, sleeping pad, and bag. The Camelbak, headlamp, spork, and hiking sticks. I even have a special storage container in my mudroom where I keep all the flavors of backpacking snacks I like to choose from.
And just like my actual gear, I find that the instinct to research and plan everything is waiting, too. The Google Maps multipoint itinerary. The favorite guidebooks and blogs. The weather reports. And I find myself asking, "How can I live out this trip with what I've learned from COVID?"
The weather is one thing that’s distinctly out of my control.
Because for me, COVID has been painful, and also a profound gift. It has helped me realize how much I thought I could control everything and the intense pressure to research/ plan/ execute it perfectly that I felt as a result. COVID helped me realize that packing things in is not always a good thing, that in order to experience some of the most profound epiphanies you might have to be bored or lonely first in order to be attentive to what is happening within. And COVID helped me realize that it's not about how many parks you visit or miles you hike, but the way you are present with those miles, those parks, those people you meet along the way.
I know that it won't be easy to let go of old habits. They served me well for a long time. But I also know that the lessons that are hardest to learn are often the ones I need most, and that what I have been forced to confront by this pandemic is what I really needed to hear all along. Not only is it okay to let go, it might even be fun.