The Holidays

If this time of year kinda wrinkles your ribbons, this one is for you.

There are two times of year that always stoke feelings of doing-it-wrong-ness within me: the peak of summer and the winter holiday season. I’ve come to expect an inevitable moment (or moments) during these times where I will feel left out of some amorphous fun-having togetherness, whimsical drama, and ongoing adventure.

When one of my favorite walking companions texted me this summer, “Finally doing a few nights on the trail I’ve been telling you about for years!” my eyes popped at the sight of her sitting on the deck of a small cabin, surrounded by the exploded contents of her backpack, taping up her feet before tackling the day’s mileage. Tired and a bit defeated from pushing words around on the page all morning, I promptly opened a browser tab and searched: best short backpacking trips near me. Sifting through the results filled me with a longing I didn’t know how to resolve. I closed the browser and made a futile effort to return to my work.

When I ate lunch a couple of hours later, I glanced at Instagram and saw a carousel of photos from another friend’s multi-day trek through the wilderness within a few hours’ drive of my home. A dark cloud floated in over my mood. I walked around my neighborhood and tried to forget about other people’s adventures for a while, but I kept accidentally circling back to them. Later that evening, as I washed the dishes, I wondered why I wasn’t out in the woods taking in jaw-dropping mountain views and drinking water from an ice-cold creek.

I slumped on the bench in the kitchen corner, damp dishtowel in my lap, furiously flicking through All Trails on my phone, trying to piece together the hiking route I’d seen earlier in my friend’s snapshots. When I was satisfied that I’d found that picture-perfect trail, I looked up and noticed I was alone in a room that had gone dark. What was I intending to do with the information glowing on my screen? I couldn’t pick up and leave tomorrow, I had work to do, pets to care for, and a car that could barely handle speed bumps let alone a rutted out dirt road.

How did other people pick up and go backpacking? They must not have pets, or maybe they’re better at planning. Maybe I was just too tentative. Sitting there with my phone in my hand, one click shy of collapsing into paralysis and self-loathing, I shouted downstairs to my husband (who was waiting patiently on the couch for me to start the movie we planned to watch when I finished the dishes). I asked if he wanted to go hiking with me the next day. Mercifully, he said yes.

And so we got up, walked the dog, had breakfast, and rolled out with water bottles and energy bars. The trail sloped upward almost immediately, and my labored breathing disheartened me. I felt the air warming around me and had a flicker of regret and frustration that we’d taken our time leaving the house. When I commented that I was already beginning to sweat, my husband offered that we didn’t have to do the whole hike. His suggestion was meant to be helpful, but it only confirmed my suspicion that we would never be the kind of people I imagined we might be–the kind who bagged an eight-miler off the couch or got an alpine start.

These concerns were familiar (and more than a little embarrassing) to me. At that moment, I knew the best thing I could do was keep my mouth shut, breathe deeply, and look around. Be here, right here, now I reminded myself over and over. I focused on the scent of the air in my nose, the way the dirt and duff absorbed the shock of my feet, the breeze across my ear lobe, and the multitude of greens. Eventually, my tense mind unfurled like a tightly bound coil, finally given the space to expand. We had a beautiful walk in the woods.

I would love for the moral of this story to be that my envy of other people’s adventures and accomplishments–something I call comparative envy–is productive, motivating even. And it can be! Comparative envy can be a thing of great beauty–the birth of a yearning that gently pulls me into action, drawing me toward a version of myself I wasn’t sure was possible until I saw it on someone else. That is part of what happened with the hike; I saw other people doing something and realized I wanted to do that thing too and that I could, so I did.

At the end of the day, I had a lovely carousel of photos I could have posted with a message about feeling grateful for a few hours in the woods–which wasn’t untrue; I was grateful for the experience–but that version of the story wasn’t entirely true. For all the enjoyment I got from the hike, there was wreckage in its wake. I couldn’t unsee the mental thrashing and verbal sniping I did on my way to and out and back on that trail. Couldn’t forget that when I saw my friends having a good time, I got grabby and competitive, and talked a lot of trash to myself about how I was living my life.

Days after that hike, we had a beer with a couple friends, and I recounted the story. I didn’t edit out the part about my envy driving me to sit alone in the dark searching All Trails for a hike that would make me feel better about myself or how, throughout the hike, I dipped in and out of low-grade concern about having lost some kind of edge when it comes to my outdoorsy-ness and athleticism. I was careful not to make the experience sound like something it wasn’t–because I knew I’d feel like a liar if I did. When I finished, everyone was quiet and I worried I’d destroyed the pleasant buzz of our warm August night together. Then my friend leaned forward, smiling and shaking her head, and confessed that their recent mid-week camping trip was also an attempt to resolve a fit of existential summertime angst.

She told us about the afternoon she snapped at her partner because she decided they were squandering their summer. While their friends were out globetrotting and adventuring, all they did was work and hang around their house. Rattled by her distress, her partner did the first thing he could think of that might soothe her. He found and booked a campsite nearby for the next evening they had off work together and then ran down the hall shouting, “ I got one! We’re going camping on Thursday,” hoping that all hope was not lost.

Days later, after a forty-five-minute drive, they pulled into Ainsworth State Park with their dog, their tent, and high hopes. They found their way to their reserved campsite, and discovered it was flanked by large RVs. The massive river nearby was rendered inaudible and inaccessible by the well-trafficked interstate running between their campground and its banks. Overall, it was kind of a fail, but it was also pretty funny. They made the best of the day out, driving up the road to a brewery, picnicking in a park by that big old river. Later that night, they were lulled to sleep by the asynchronous whoosh and rumble of semi-trucks trundling along the interstate nearby.

They’re unlikely to forget their trip to Ainsworth State Park anytime soon in no small part because it will become their reference point for the kind of hollow victory on offer in situations driven by comparative envy, which, for the record, I will now and forever refer to as “Camping in Ainsworth State Park.” It’s not that you don’t get anything from Camping in Ainsworth State Park, but that it’s rarely what you expect, and it never heals the deep cut created by the question, “What’s wrong with me/my life?” That gash of a question cannot be answered with a day hike, a night of car camping, or even a long, exotic vacation.

Healing of any kind demands time and attention; put another way, it requires care. I’m writing this in the middle of December, the eye of the hurricane we call the holiday season when my desire to go Camping in Ainsworth State Park often spikes. Despite my best intentions, my expectations always go up right alongside the lights and decorations. Whether I’m fretting about my lack of sufficient holiday traditions or panicking about being unprepared to exploit the full potential of the new year ahead, I respond by pushing myself to do a bunch of stuff that sounds good but doesn’t feel so great (aka Camping in Ainsworth State Park). The net is a strange, not-so-delicious cocktail of productivity and disappointment.

At the beginning of December, I read a prompt from artist Anna Brones¹ that offered a little support for managing the urge to go Camping in Ainsworth State Park. She offered three questions to help readers establish a compass to help guide them through the season:

What do you want this season to feel like?
What are the emotions that feel essential in the weeks ahead?
What state of being would you like to experience in this season?

Notice that none of them are about stuff you want or need to do–no mention of goals or lists! The idea is that once your compass is oriented to your desired feeling or state of being, it can help keep you on course and support you in deciding how and where to spend your time and energy in a way that’s aligned with what you actually want to experience. It’s such a simple shift–to start with a feeling instead of a doing–that I’m surprised by its impact.

Two weeks into working with my compass, I can’t say I’ve kicked my urge to go Camping in Ainsworth State Park. But I have noticed how things play out differently when I remember to be patient with and curious about my envy, to wonder what craving it’s illuminating. As a result, I’ve been slightly less dramatic and erratic, my actions smaller and less flashy, and I’ve had fewer logistical tangles and emotional hangovers.

I’m no pro; just last week, I read a description of an annual winter gathering that sounded so wonderful it convinced me there was a party-sized hole in my life where a wonderful annual winter gathering should be. I dropped my compass like a bag of dirt and ran off to tell my husband we had to create and host a big, seasonal gathering this year. Alas, my grabby little fantasy was short-lived. Within a few days, I realized I had no interest in planning and orchestrating an annual event. There was no big hole to fill, just a spot of desire for the sparkly experience–connection, joy, grace, and generosity–the author captured so beautifully in her remembrance.

Heeding the directive of my compass, I moved toward those sparkly experiences in small ways. I texted a friend. I held the door open for a stranger at the grocery store. And I wrote an essay about that time I confessed to a friend that sometimes my insides feel like a dumpster fire and instead of walking away, she thanked me for making her feel less alone and told me a story that made me feel that way too.

How I feel when I spend the holiday season camping in Ainsworth State Park.

1. Learn more about Anna’s digital advent–prompts for reflection and small, thoughtful actions and activities, sent via daily emails from December 1st through Christmas.