A Facebook flashback slapped me in the face the other day. It suddenly occurred to me that a year had passed since everything changed. Over these last twelve months I’ve stayed in one place longer than I have in years.
The memory itself seems imaginary, from another world — a fantasy.
It’s one of my favourite photos from our time in Latin America. It’s of Kylee and I hiking beneath the towering wax palms of the fairytale-like Cocora Valley, high in Colombian coffee country.
One of our favourite places in the world, this region of central Colombia is a place that evokes only happy thoughts. Today it’s calming nostalgia.
Between mountain bike adventures and tranquil hikes to hidden waterfalls, a year ago it was all too easy to blissfully ignore what was quickly becoming a global issue.
The virus was at that point only was just landing in the western hemisphere. As far as we were concerned, surrounded by the rolling Andes, the problem was limited to China and a few pockets of western Europe.
Yet within a few short days, we found ourselves on a bus back to Bogotá. A few more and we’d be on a flight back to Canada. We were a handful of the lucky who managed to grab one of the last flights out of a country that would be under lockdown the following morning.
Life has been an ongoing period of adjustment in the year since.
How wildly things have changed. Masks and lockdowns, chaos in the markets, entire industries crumbling while otherwise obscure projects have blossomed.
People are divided over steps laid out to protect us, thought the frustration is completely understandable.
We no longer see each other’s faces when we’re able to spend time with one another. And physical contact — one of the most precious aspects of the human experience — has become taboo.
I can’t begin to imagine what the next twelve months will bring. And as much as I’ll never be able to fully accept the new normal, it certainly looks to stay this way for a while.
It’s hard to say how much of this current world we can shake and how much will stick with us for the long haul.
But I’m confident that the pendulum will return to an acceptable balance at some point.
Gatherings and festivals will resume, smiles will no longer be hidden by cloth, and hugs will return with a loving vengeance.
Perhaps we’ll walk with the palms again.
