The Show Goes On ...

but with some edits.

I’m planning a trip again.

It feels, mostly, terrifying. 

I grew up traveling. The child of two English professors, we were always bouncing from some library to another, from a conference on eighteenth century literature to another on Faulkner.

Later, though, when I began to travel just for fun, and particularly for wildlife, my Dad especially seemed puzzled. “I’m not a traveler,” he’d say, clearly wondering how on earth he had raised one. For him, the traveling had never been the point; it was just a means to an end. You put up with it in order to get to the musty book that only existed in a few libraries on earth, or to present your paper to the only other people on earth who cared whether the comma went here or there in Swift’s “The Rape of the Lock.”

I was reminded of this when a colleague and friend told a story about her parents’ horror when she decided to major in theater. Raised in Chicago with a twin sister and several other siblings, it was a big treat to be taken out as a family to the theater. Each time was magical: they got dressed up, the whole family was excited, they ate a nice dinner, and the show itself was a fanatical escape. It was an Occassion!

When she got to college, her father expected her to major in something practical, and was dismayed at her serious interest in theater — but why wouldn’t she be swept off her feet by the fanciest, most special thing she had ever known? He had thought they were going out for an evening’s entertainment; she had fallen in love.

For years, the same was true for me and travel. I took my first international flight at two-and-a-half. I learned to entertain myself, making up complicated stories about the people who lived in the clouds, and threw “cloud balls” (like snowballs) at each other. I read in the back of conference rooms. And eventually, I fell in love with the guidebooks, the hustle and bustle, the alienation. The dizzy feeling when you’re jet lagged and lost. All the flotsam and jetsam of travel.

And then the pandemic hit.

It had always been in the back of my mind: what’s the wildlife right around me that I’m missing, while I go galavanting halfway around the world?

Years ago, when I first wondered this, I tried to go right for the biggest predator I could think of. I signed up for some grad student’s urban coyote project, but I was sick the day of the training session, and despite a promise of a makeup session, I was never contacted again. I tried checking the District Coyotes map and went out looking for coyotes on my own — wandered around suburban parks pre-dawn, scaring even the dog-owners — but never saw a thing.

The pandemic though — it slowed me down. 

I stopped looking for coyotes. 

I probably got COVID really early on in the pandemic, before there was good testing — back in March of 2020 — and spent about a month on my couch, and about another month being just about able to walk around the block.

So by the time I could really get out there again (masked, distanced, etc.), I was just happy to be outside. I hung a bird feeder, and filled it every day. I got a window planter. 

I started going to local parks, not just once in a blue moon, but regularly. Enough to see the seasons change. And then the micro-seasons. Next, I’d like to start knowing some of the people — I see them, and recognize them as regulars. I’d like to start getting known myself.

Last November, my friend Michèle mentioned that she and her boys were planning a trip to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. “Can I come?” I impulsively invited myself along. She graciously said yes.

So now, the guidebooks are pouring in, the arrangements are made or are in process. I’ve just gotten my second COVID vaccine. I’m hoping the national numbers will go down by August. That’s one part of my terror. But another part …

Here’s a frog that Kal and Marcus’ son — friends I went for a distanced walk with yesterday — introduced me to.

What a gift it was. What an absolute gift.

***

[Just to make this clear: this is in no way an endorsement of a disease that has killed around 575,000 people in the United States and almost 3 million worldwide so far. COVID-19 has been devastating, and there are no upsides to it, no silver linings. I am writing about my personal experiences during the past year, and reflecting on some of the changes the pandemic has made to my behavior, but those personal experiences aren’t meant to erase the larger horrors of the year.]