Adventures in Isolation

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

I was blessed to be raised in a small, rural community along with most of my relatives. As I grew up, I spent my weekends and summers hanging out with my grandparents and cousins. There were times that I believed (as most kids do) that my grandparents were quite old-fashioned, especially when making suggestions on how I could entertain myself. However, instead of simply sending me outside to play, my grandparents always seemed to incorporate some life lesson or learning experience with each adventure. My grandparents taught me to read books, bake bread, climb trees, dance the polka/waltz/schottisch to “Whoopee” John Wilfahrt, ride bikes, plant zinnias, play Skip-Bo and Parcheesi, put in a hard day’s work for the coveted fifty-cent piece, and sing at the top of my lungs to Kate Smith’s “God Bless America” or Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” In the 1970s and 80s, all those things were so corny, but I did what I was told and received individualized attention by doing so. I was the youngest grandchild on my dad’s side of the family, so I appreciated the special treatment; although, there were times that I hated being the youngest – especially when learning to climb the huge mulberry tree in their front yard. I was not allowed to use a chair, ladder, another person, or my tricycle seat to boost me to the first notch. Rather, I had to wait to grow taller while watching all my cousins and siblings climb the tree without me. Be assured that they taunted me from the long vertical branch that hung six feet above my head. By the time I was able to climb the tree on my own, they had all outgrown the novelty of hanging out in a tree at Grandpa and Grandma’s house. Now, as I fully embrace my fifth decade of life, I am realizing how incredibly lucky I was to have been raised not only by wonderful parents but also amazing grandparents. I have learned to find adventure in the simplest of moments as well as the most complex.

COVID-19 hit hard and doesn’t look like it is backing off much. We all should be social distancing, avoiding public places, wearing masks, and washing our hands often. However, it seems we’re all growing weary of these government mandates that seemingly restrict our personal rights (forget about the rights of my 80-year-old mother with diabetes). As COVID-19 statistics increase, so are incidents of domestic violence, financial distress, divorce filings, hunger/poverty, child abuse, protesting, and rioting. When stay-at-home orders began, actors, musicians, newscasters, teachers, vloggers, and the rest of the world entertained one another on social media. This seems to be waning. We have all become Zoom experts, spending entirely too much time designing the best Zoom background.

When COVID-19 began paralyzing the world, I was in the middle of selling a house and moving while teaching online. My own children were finishing up their semesters online, while two of them were among the 2020 graduates who didn’t get to walk across the stage and accept a diploma. In May, Semester at Sea notified the Fall 2020 voyagers that the semester was canceled. I parked my trailer and stopped making summer and fall travel plans. So, how do I continue chasing verbs and finding adventures in isolation?

After completing the unusual and challenging school year online, I’ve been able to catch up on household chores and personal hobbies. My highly competitive kiddos and I played our original Rocky Mountain version of Survivor via Zoom. I acted as host, while they competed in reward and immunity challenges of all sorts. After a couple of weeks of playing an hour each night and voting out each other, my daughter-in-law earned the title of sole survivor. Since then, we’ve played other games and chatted regularly. I’ve gardened, scrapbooked, read, cleaned, organized, and returned to writing letters by hand and mailing them in an envelope with a stamp, rather than shooting off a quick email or text message.

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Over Memorial Weekend, I marked another item off of my bucket list. I visited the home of one of my ancestors. In 2014, I helped my mother publish her book The Monhollon Homesteaders: Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado 1859-1987, which chronicles the lives of my grandmother and her extended family, including the events of 1919 when several families worked together to build a homestead in southern Bent County, Colorado. The homestead included several homes, a grocery store, acres of crops, and livestock.

After an hour or so of driving on dirt roads through the Southern Colorado desert, we found the remains of the homestead, as well as the schoolhouse where my grandmother attended with her two siblings. She recorded her memories of those years, making our current stay-at-home orders seem so ridiculously easy and insignificant. One hundred years ago, my grandmother was truly isolated. Homesteading in those days meant starting from absolutely nothing. They built their humble homes, planted crops, and worked tirelessly. There was no technology to speak of – limited transportation including a horse and a mule, no television, no radio, no phone. Miles and miles from any town, the families on the homestead unified to survive. The wind blew, the drought came, and the families endured without government economic impact payments.

Today, I am so appreciative of the ways my grandparents taught me to work hard while seeking adventures (or chasing verbs). I cannot think of a time when my grandparents were angry or sad, either. I do remember them asking me in a roundabout way, “Tell me, Jennifer, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” At one point, I just wanted to be able to climb the tree in their front yard or be old enough to work in their grocery store. I was a kid who really didn’t think much about what I did each day, let alone my future, but I always seemed to have grandiose dreams. I now realize the value of how my grandparents not only encouraged me to climb a tree but taught me how.

My adventures in isolation are grounded in joy, formulated by a long history of folks making the best out of the worst situations. My heart breaks for the relative boredom, sorrow, and destruction that COVID-19 has brought upon others. I wish I could fix it. I wish I could show my students that personal isolation may not be limited to this moment because of a world pandemic and that they must discover their own adventures in the midst of extraordinary times as well as moments of devastation. Above all, I wish I could teach my students to climb trees, dance the polka, and sing “God Bless America” at the top of their lungs.