How Traveling has Shown Me We’re all in this Together

So I have been trying to figure out how to start this week’s post. We have just gone on this amazing trip. Seen so many amazing animals in the wild. We’ve gotten to hang out and eat breakfast with orangutans at a research station. See a tapir in the wild. It was only for about 60 seconds, and we hiked for two days there and back, carrying all our water in the humid jungle to have that chance of seeing it, and we did. We had all these amazing experiences, which still make me giddy and we are still sorting through pictures. And then the announcement came that the United States is pulling out of the Paris Agreement.

I mean, there’s more than just that. There’s plenty more things that have been happening around the world that just cause me utter sadness. I choose not to talk about them here because this a travel blog. This is a suppose to be a place where hopefully, you can come to and count on seeing amazing pictures and having a vicarious experience together with us. There’s lots of other things I write about, mostly to myself, because I’m too chicken to publish them, but this. This decision to essentially disregard pollution, the effects of sea levels rising and to basically say the environment doesn’t matter, has been weighing really heavily on me.

I think of all the friends and people we met along the way who are out working in the jungles and rainforests researching wildlife. Or I think of all the people we met who live on islands. I think of, simply, all the people and animals.

I don’t want to say all this is totally consuming me, because that is giving other people a lot of power. But I’m bothered. I know so many people are bothered. Probably most of us can scroll through our facebook feeds and read headlines and see that plenty of us are bothered too.

What do we do about the state of the world? How do we react? What do we say to kids when they ask about the climate and why there’s a likely chance the rhino could be extinct by the time they are adults.

Los Angeles, California air pollution.

To me, this issue isn’t about political party, religious belief, business or any other {thing} anyone wants to use as leverage and say we can ignore the environment.

Air pollution for daily commute in China.

How can anyone say the pictures above is the air you would want to breath? Whether or not you believe climate change is happening or if global warming is a hoax or not, much of the same steps would still be in place to prevent you or your kid from breathing that air.

I don’t get it.

So I am writing about it. I am writing about this not to try and stir the pot, copy and paste charts in here to prove a point, but to share my story in all this and what I am doing about it.

***

Part of that story begins with Ramesh in India. Ramesh was our homestay owner and guide in Jim Corbett National Park he grew up and spent his whole life in Ramganga. As a guide he has observed the seasons in and out for years. There are migratory wildlife patterns that he has seen affected by the seasons temperature changing. When we were there, Ramesh could almost always find his guests the beautiful Asian bird of paradise. Known for its long tail and beautiful flight, this bird is migrating later and later. This might not seem like a huge deal in and of itself. But then it’s egg laying schedule is affected. The time of year chicks hatch get bumped later and later, but the food sources are not always the same that time of year. The survival rate of young birds becomes less and less and this is a real life way this animal could potentially become extinct.

***

At another time we were simply walking down a trail in Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam and were coming upon a local guide and his guest. He asked us to try and guess where the guest was from because we probably wouldn’t guess correctly. We didn’t. She was from Montenegro, a super small country in Europe. (Yeah, I don’t know that much about it either, you can get a little idea here.) Then the guessing game continued for where we were from. It didn’t take long to guess we were Americans. Baseball caps are an easy give away usually. Then this man, in the middle of the Vietnam jungle, started talking in fluent English about so many specific USA foreign policies. He was keenly aware and informed of so many layers of the USA and Chinese relations. The prior administration kept pressures on China from building dams along some of the neighboring areas. Now if China does build these dams and the water flow of the rivers are altered, the entire ecosystem of the not only Cat Tien National Park, but many local communities and other ecosystems will be influenced as well. What really struck me about this man, was here, in the middle of this remote jungle, we were talking about how American politics will in one way or another, be affecting his life.

***

There were countless other conversations and interactions. Their words, worries and hopes fill by head.

Which leads me to the second reason I wanted to write this post, to share what I am doing about it in the hopes of encouraging us all, or if at the very least, encouraging myself. I always borrow the words of this man George we met while camping at a research station in Costa Rica. We each were getting up at 4 am and going out looking for animals and at the end of each day we’d talk about what we each had seen. In terms of talking about life and trying to feel positive, George always said, “I need a lot of spirit to keep me going.” He was talking about surrounding himself with people who gave him hope, hold him up to keep working on his research when he felt down (he was a wildlife biologist) and just people who fill his spirit up.

I want to be a spirit uplifter for at least one person, and honestly, I could use some uplifting myself. It’s one of the main reasons I have always been a writer. In my own private writings I write to myself to decompress all my fears, anxieties, confusions and basically, just writing to myself to say, “It will be ok.” So to you, to me, to all of us, it will be ok.

So no matter what side of the coin you fall on in our current state of the world, that isn’t the focus. It matters more how we cope and how we talk to each other about what we think.

Here are some of the things I am doing to keep my spirits high and be the best version of myself:

Not reading the news right before bed. This is a bad habit I started, especially during this last trip abroad. With the time difference, almost every night our time I did a quick head line browse before going to bed as the morning news at home was just coming out. I am making myself stop this habit. In case your wondering, it’s freaking hard. I want so badly at the end of the night to be like, ‘Well what else is wrong…scroll, scroll, scroll.’ This is a pointless exercise that it not helpful in doing anything except increasing my anxiety. I’m stopping. I tell myself I’m stopping. Some nights I fail. At first I tricked myself into reasons why I ‘must do this mindless scrolling.’ Now, for the most part, I am at least 90% successful in rerouting this habit.

Not reading the news first thing in the morning. Pretty much the same reasons listed above. Yes, of course, read the news. But I don’t need to allow it to flash flood, unregulated, into the very first or the very last thoughts of my day.

I think about the things in my friends refrigerators. Ok, this is very specific and it may seem a little weird (and if your my friends reading this and I have never told you this before now, then sorry, here it is) but I do this. And this is what I mean. I think so much we have power in where and how we spend our money. When I go over to my chosen tribe of friends that I hold near and dear, I love looking in their refrigerators. We make shared meals together, but I look in their fridges and I see produce from their gardens, milk from local farmers, zucchini’s from their neighbors, fair trade items and just good food. I just see the type of world I want to live in summed in their refrigerators. These are some of the images and thoughts I carry with me when I travel. During many parts of this last trip in particular, our eyes could not escape the poverty around us. It is by supporting small businesses, local people and caring about both where we get our food from and the people that make it that will play a large role in the outcome of this world we live in.  So yeah, I think about what’s in people refrigerators, a lot.

Wash out zip lock bags. Oh I just cringe when I see a zip lock bag only get used once. They are so sturdy. One box of zippies might last us a whole year. I’ve never really kept track, but they can stay useful for a long time.

Usually, at any given time it’s likely I am wearing four different socks, except when traveling. When traveling, I need my good Darn Tough Socks. But when I’m at home I have a bunch of socks I am “wearing up.” I don’t know how your feet and shoes work, but I seem to get these wear down spots in my socks, but each foot’s worn down spot is different and also varies depending on the shoe. So I just match up random socks so that all the worn down spots of one area are covered up with another area. Trying to write this down and explain it makes it feel like it’s harder than it is. Basically, I just layer up my socks and I don’t throw them away until my foot goes through the bottom of my sock threads.

Cut open my tooth paste. Yes, it’s true, I do this. “Oh but it couldn’t possibly be worth it,’ some will say. Well, depending on the brand and style of tube,  it can last another week like that with two people using it. Here is a bit more of a look into how these small actions can add up to big outcomes.

Ok, so the three things above is a double whammy because, yes, it helps the environment, but it also saves me money. Many a times when I tell people I do some of these things, they laugh and act like ‘they could never do that’ and that ‘those actions can’t really account for that much.’ Well, to those critics, in the nicest and most humblest of ways I can in the moment, I kindly remind them of how much we travel. So yes, I do believe our actions, no matter how small and in calculable they may seem, yes, they do matter.

***

So this is not the original post I was thinking or planning to write. But I literally could not get to next thing until I got past this. I refuse to let all these world wide events overrule my mind and have me feel hopeless or helpless. I will practice the self discipline to remain focused on what is in my direct control. I will continue to believe in the goodness of our neighbors whether across the yard or across oceans. I will continue to hold onto the belief that rhinos have a chance of not going extinct. I will continue to work on becoming the best version of myself because at the end of the day, we’re all in this together.

Thank you so much for reading and I hope in some small way, if you were feeling distraught, this post has brightened your day just a tiny bit. It certainly helped me, so thank you for being a part of that too.