The world was a different place three and a half months ago.
In the wake of COVID-19, we - as well as everyone else - have watched as countries across the globe started closing their borders, restricting travel and instituting lockdowns. People hoarded toilet paper and groceries while getting ready to hunker down in their homes. Public health officials and medical health officers started appearing on the news every day. And all the while, the numbers of sick and dying continued to grow.
After finishing recounting our tales from the 7th continent on March 8, I'd every intention of coming back to this blog to write a round up, one last post tying it all together: what we'd learned from our time in Antarctica, how being there changed us. But it's difficult to think about this wondrous place, and so many other incredible travel destinations around the world, that now seem impossible to visit and entirely out of reach.
...but as Lauryn Hill would say: "Don't forget what you've got, looking back, looking back, looking back"
While hubs and I had previously traveled to many other places, with nowhere else but Antarctica did I feel so much connection to the land, nature and wildlife.
There were often times on our journey where I was so much in awe of the things we were seeing, it felt like we were on a different planet. Or rather, that this incredible setting with these amazing creatures was actually the real world versus the one at home. I started to feel like the so-called "real world" was something that had been manufactured - a fake reality created by humans simply to keep us occupied on a day to day basis, filling our time with trivial and unnecessary tasks. This "real world" enabled humans to forget about those things that are actually important - the health and existence of the Earth, and regard for all animals, including the non-human animals with whom we share this planet.
Hubs had read about an experience similarly described by astronauts seeing Earth from outer space, called the "overview effect." This is well described by writer Ivan DeLuce in Business America:
When astronauts saw Earth from afar for the first time, they described a cognitive shift in awareness. This state of mental clarity, called the "overview effect," occurs when...you become totally overwhelmed and awed by the fragility and unity of life on our blue globe. It's the uncanny sense of understanding the "big picture," and of feeling connected to and yet bigger than the intricate processes bubbling on Earth.In many ways today, it feels like we as a society have learned this lesson of connectedness and fragility the hard way.
"This is Major Tom to Ground Control - I'm stepping through the door and I'm floating in a most peculiar way"
Yesterday, Air Canada announced layoffs of 20,000 of its workers; at the end of March, WestJet was forced to let go of nearly half its staff (and job losses have continued). While many expect the federal government to bail out these Canadian airlines, with national and provincial debt soaring, and a return to "normal" for domestic and international travel still entirely uncertain, it is not hard to imagine the possibility of these airlines going under completely.
What is hard to imagine, is what travel will look like in the next few years. When will travel restrictions be lifted? Will the pre-COVID-19 volume of international flights resume? Will airlines be forced to fly fewer routes, take on less passengers, ensure social distancing? For how long? But also, will passengers be comfortable getting back on planes?
"Is it getting better? Or do you feel the same?"
You may recall I caught a nasty head cold towards the end of the trip. On the final leg of the journey, on a flight from Toronto to Vancouver, I was suffering from a buildup of sinus pressure and a terrible headache. To try and alleviate this, I was blowing my nose continuously and trying to cough. In response, I received more than a few death stares from those sitting in front of and next to me, like I was besieged with plague - how dare I have been allowed on the plane!
I maybe should have guessed that that was the beginning of the end of travel as we knew it. But how could we possibly know it would change so drastically as it has? When all governments at all levels start (largely) to agree with one another, it sure feels to me like the end has come. (Don't worry - that's only how I feel on the bad days since this global pandemic started.)
For now, I - like all of you - will continue to wait, listening to the advice of our medical health officers and trying to follow the directives as best I can.
And I will dream of Antarctica, my spiritual home and one I hope to return to some day when we are all allowed and feel safe to travel again.
