Patagonia Pandemic

As the day drew closer to our trip the news regarding COVID 19 was just numbers and statistics that were chasing us. I didn’t know yet to run or hide, I just knew there were people who it had caught up with and they didn’t live where I did. I was thankful for that, and I made the decision to continue on with a much-anticipated adventure that I had made financial, physical and mental preparations for. My sister, my niece, and my friend Brittany would be backpacking in remote areas of Patagonia for 7 days. We would be sleeping in tents, zip lining across canyons and rivers, climbing mountains, and traversing glaciers. I thought we would go home and go back to our normal routines and lives.

This picture was the taken the first day of the trek, and we were not thinking about a virus and thousands of people suffering on ventilators. We were breathing fresh air and a million feet away from other human beings. There are many different ways to get to know yourself and this kind of physical intensity with this much beauty in front of you is a joy. Being sequestered in your home away from work, family, friends, and a bustling noisy world is lonely and agitating at best.

We came off the mountain to chaos and uncertainty. I had all of these wonderful pictures and stories to tell. I had seen and experienced a trip of a lifetime and nobody asked me about it. They were concerned I would be trapped in another country and then they were concerned I had been through the busiest airports in the world and possibly infected. We had missed the build up to prepare us. While we were hiking, sleeping on the ground, and soaking up the grandeur before us the world was closing down and we didn’t know it. We barely made it out of Argentina, and when we landed in the states I felt I didn’t have time to process the suddenness.

I have been deemed and essential worker, which means I still get up everyday and I still work 8 to 5 so I can put food on my table and get out of my house. But, I do daydream about seeing a movie or packing my backpack and booking a flight. I daydream about shaking a neighbors hand and hugging my friends. I scroll through my Patagonia pictures and see the happy tired faces and wonder if things will ever be the same. I pray I don’t get sick and die or know anyone who does. All normal thoughts, only now they are amplified.

Part of the reason why I backpack and travel is to get to know myself and the world around me. I am hardly ever home. Now, suddenly, I am here, in my home, with my cat, getting to know myself in a whole different way. My sister has called and texted me many times over the past few months and we always end our conversations with, “I wish we were back on that mountain.” We don’t want the pandemic to hijack our trip, but it sort of did.

I spend a lot of time planning and trying to escape “normal” activities, but the most impactful moments and lasting feelings are in the everyday ‘normal” activities we share with the world we shop in, the world we entertain ourselves in, the parks and beaches we gather in. It’s why people want to get back to normal. This picture reminds me that. It reminds me that sometimes “normal’ is a good thing.