Timewarp

So far, my most extended expedition with no contact at all was 90 days, and the longest I have been away was with limited contact was about five months. Big deal Will you travel for a long time. Yes, I do, and I usually love it. However, it can be hard.

James on our yearly trip

Don’t get me wrong, I love expeditions, and shutting off my phone for a few months. This kind of change trip can be the catalyst for amazing discoveries. I believe it makes me more creative and deeper thinking. It forces me to get to know myself and accept who I am. On expeditions, I can also shed almost anything that is stressing me out. Most importantly, I have made some of my closest friends in the backcountry.

Every lifestyle has a downside. The biggest downside for me hits as with a weird after effect I think of like a time warp. When I leave on an expedition, time seems to pause for me, or at least time at home.

Everyone has their own lives and tons of things going on, but it feels like all of the things l leave should stop. I feel like my relationships should be in the same place, people should have the same haircuts, trees should be the same, and everything should be exactly how I left it.

No surprise, nothing ever is.

I have come home to all kinds of changes in circumstance, but each homecoming has one thing in common; a physical discomfort as everything recalibrates. Maybe reverse culture shock is the best way to describe it, but it is more than that. It feels in some ways like I just warped into the future, and upon arriving in the future, all of the things I miss are pressed through my body and mind rapidly. Catching up and recovering from the time warp takes me a couple of days.

To make things worse, explaining the expedition is impossible without experiencing it, but everyone wants to hear about it in condensed into a few sentences. I want to share my experiences and the lessons I have learned, but I want to do it in a way that ignite the same feelings I experienced in the moment.  

Antarctic Peninsula cruising

As I write, I am considering deleting this entry forever. Partially because I don’t often talk about my feelings, but mostly because it feels like a complaint that I have no solution for, other than just dealing with it.

Neko Harbour kayaking

Of course, things will always go on, and of course people want to hear about amazing experiences. But I feel a weird sense of insignificance and alienation when time forces its way through me and only I know what happened in my time line. I doubt I am the only one who feels these time warps, but I don’t always know if people decipher the change I am going through.

Here I am at the end of the article, on my way home soon from two months on a ship in Antarctica. I didn’t delete the file yet, and I even posted it to the internet. Communicating with people about challenges we are working through helps us all grow and overcome the challenges, so even if I am not always the best at communication, I am trying a bit harder these days.

In this case, the main point is, when I get home I am going to need some time to process.  Or if someone close to you just got back from whatever it might be, he or she might be struggling to catch up with reality and how the experiences fit into his or her new timeline.

Be patient.

Penguins Greet after a long day at sea

Speed and Perspective

This gets a bit deep into mathematical theory… if you’re not into that skip to the third paragraph.

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There is an interesting issue with exploration known as the coast paradox. It is problem where the smaller the unit of length used to measure a coast, the longer the coast is. For example, a coast line measured in kilometers is actually longer than if it were measured with miles. Even more so if measured with feet. This is because bends in the path occur more regularly, and as we know, the shortest distance is a straight line. From a mathematical perspective, I find it pretty awesome because as the unit of measure approaches 0 distance becomes infinite, so I move infinite distance every time I paddle, bike, or run. So do you.

The other day, I was leading a group and we seemed to be moving slow. I started to think about the coastline paradox for some reason. But this time I went farther down the rabbit hole. Distance is related to speed, so when the unit of length decreases relative speed increases. In truth, speed does not change nor does the distance, but we can manipulate the measurement by adding folds to the measuring tape.

Low tide in the intertidal zone

So why does this matter? If you apply how we can manipulate distance to our perspective, any speed can feel fast paced. A day might drag on if you are using mountains as the reference points, but if you shift your perspective and start using pebbles and seashells as references you might find the day flying past. Although when the end of the day comes you may not have actually left the driveway. I think it is like when you get off of the highway and everything feels super slow until you get used to neighborhood speeds again

Grand Canyon National Park

After I thought up this madness, I have been applying it to day to day life and reflecting back on days that felt boring. I find it much easier to move at the same speed as other people. Similarly, the days that felt slow I was thinking about something far away.

There is no best speed. Anyone who tells you there is, is trapped in their ways. There can certainly be an appropriate speed. When you are racing that speed is as fast as possible. When traveling with a group, it might be a pace comfortable for people to chat. Exercise speed could be something else.

Next time you are outside play with your perspective a bit. Maybe it will help you enjoy it even more. If it works outside, maybe changing reference points will also work to change perspectives at work reducing the stress from a fast paced environment, or to speed things up on a slow day.

Unfortunately, we have not yet mastered time and space, so you will not be able to apply a perspective shift to workout less and get in shape faster.

Dew drops in Alaska