While navigating this time of quarantine and self-isolation, I’ve repeatedly recalled moments from past trips when I had struggled with doubt, isolation, and uncertainty. I figured this would be a good time to go into more detail on that, in case anyone reading can take anything from my experiences, as they’ve helped me to find peace and stillness in the midst of this pandemic.
A specific instance that has been on my mind lately is a period of a few days after the hike with Nathan in the Julian Alps that I wrote about in the last post. I had come down with a cold by the time he and I had parted ways and wanted to recover from it before meeting up with a couple of friends from home four days later. I also figured that some solitude in the mountains might be useful as a mental reset before the second half of my trip.
After hiking down from the alpine hut at Uskovnici I returned to Gostišče Pr Pristavc, the restaurant/hostel that Nathan and I had stayed at outside of Lake Bohinj, except this time I booked a private room instead of the dorm room. I didn’t want to be that annoying, clearly sick guest, coughing and keeping everyone awake at night, not to mention exposing them to what I had. So for three nights, I stayed in a small bedroom that started to feel more and more like a cell. For more context, Polje is a small village in northwestern Slovenia. Other than private residences and farms, it has just the restaurant/hostel where I was staying and a tiny grocery shop down the road. Upon my first visit, it seemed like the ideal place to rest up: serene and quiet, situated in a picturesque mountain valley. But after Nathan and I had left Polje for the upper mountains, the weather had turned, and it became a lot colder, often raining. Additionally, daylight savings time had just kicked in, so I was adjusting to shorter days on top of everything else.
View opposite Gostišče Pr Pristavc
I was in the most beautiful place but feeling miserable. It was this potent combination of physical illness, loneliness from isolating myself from the other travelers, and frustration with being stuck mostly indoors. The previous three weeks had been a blur of excitement and new experiences, and now it felt like I was stuck and that time was dragging by. It was such a stark contrast to my mental expectation of what travel should be. I didn’t know what to do with all of this extra time, and I was starting to wish I could just teleport back home. I began to doubt my decision to travel for that long again alone and to do it so close to winter. I started to retreat into my head, and second-guess myself. I had thought I was ready for solitude but instead found isolation.
Looking back, all those worries seem laughably trivial. My self-centered mindset caused me to overlook the fact that everyone catches a cold from time to time (and never at convenient times). And loneliness and isolation stirred up so much impatience that even a few days seemed like an eternity. I realize I hadn’t prepared for that much downtime and wasn’t ready to be so alone with my own thoughts. This past week, I stumbled upon a quote by the author John Graves that I wish I had found much sooner: “A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness and that to seek it is perversion.” It seems that we’re so accustomed to being constantly “connected” with our ever-growing social circles, that when we step away from that even for just a little while, we feel this sense of anxiety, and that we’re missing out. Being alone quickly starts to feel like being lonely.
Back in Polje, I decided to reteach myself patience and to use the time I had constructively. I left my phone upstairs in my room while I sat in the hostel kitchen, that way I couldn’t compulsively check it out of anxiety. I spent hours sorting through the hundreds of photos I had taken so far, as well as writing a new post on previous experiences from the trip. I journaled constantly, capturing as many of the fleeting thoughts or emotions as I could as they came to me. I took a couple walks to the town’s only store, to pick up ingredients for cooking my own meals. Eventually, I grew comfortable with this quieter, slower pace, and could better focus my attention on the present moment. This is the mindset I’ve tried to bring to today’s events. I’m choosing to view “social distancing” as the perfect opportunity to again practice being comfortable alone, and turning isolation into solitude. It also helps me to remind myself that to those whom I truly matter, being out of sight doesn’t mean I’m out of mind.
The other lesson I’m taking with me from Polje, is choosing to reframe my perception of this current pandemic, viewing it not in terms of opportunities lost, but in terms of what opportunities I can gain from it. Time is our greatest asset. With more of it at our disposal, we can reprioritize, and spend it on those things for which we never seemed to find the time before our world changed.