Day 30: Hiking through quarantine
Why you should always follow directions
Hello friends. This was roughly the amount of time I had falsely estimated this diary would have carried on for, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned during my past year and a half in Italy, it’s that things take their time here. It took me five months and one near-nervous breakdown to get my residency, so I was already well-vetted for this. Quarantine continues, and so must I.
It’s been an interesting month, that resembles an extended rollercoaster ride. You are excited in the beginning, it all seems like a new adventure, but by the end you start feeling a bit sick, and that extra loop was probably a little unnecessary. But, eventually, we will all have an exciting story to tell, and a horrible back pain to prove it.
Paradoxically, this experience of being constantly indoors reminds me of an outdoor expedition award we were encouraged (forced?) to do in school, called the Duke of Edinburgh Award. I didn’t know who the Duke of Edinburgh was until tonight (none other than Prince Philip!), but judging by the nature of this initiative, I always assumed he was definitely a secret sadomasochist, and he also had other people to carry his things for him.
My curiosity was ignited, so I searched for photos of Prince Philip camping. This was the most relevant one I could find, which probably confirms all of my above assumptions:
The Award consisted of undertaking long hikes in the great outdoors, in teams of up to seven, armed with a paper map, a compass, and badly packed rucksacks. We had to walk for kilometres, find the designated checkpoints, pass through them, and then end up in the campsite where we would hopefully find all other teams, set up our tents, light a campfire, eat canned food, sleep in our badly set up tents, and set off the next day to do it all over again.
Though it all sounds delightful, you must remember that teenagers are noisy, smelly and restless, and, like the pandemic, this was all new to us and we had received zero training on how to navigate through it. One of the expeditions, which was the practice round for the Gold (and most difficult) level, found us in a makeshift team because some people were on family vacation or had exams to study for. This left everyone with a group of people who had no idea how to read a map, and our only comfort was looking at a mountain which seemed to constantly appear diagonally on our right (so much for the compass), and thinking ‘This must be mountain 251, so if we continue for another 5km on this route, we should find the campsite.’ In the meantime, we ignored all signs that clearly indicated where the campsite was, dismissing them as a detour because the distance seemed too long.
Hours later, we were lost, it started snowing, and when we finally admitted defeat, we unwrapped the emergency phone to call our teacher to come pick us up. He asked us where we were and when we told him he laughed and simply said, “You’re off the map.”
Like hiking through a cold mountain, the days in lockdown will seem endless, they will start merging into each other, and a very short amount of time will feel like a century. The lesson of my hiking story is that, although the signs might seem wrong, they are probably right, and you should always follow the directions.
Remember that this was only the practice round. I can’t even begin to imagine what the actual qualification round was like, and no, I never even tried.
And, let’s just say my rucksack packing skills were not the best, because I underestimated the physical perils of the hike and decided to take various non-essentials with me, including a battery-operated radio, a stack of magazines, and a jar of Nutella. Like quarantine itself, my back was hurting, I was tired, and I could not wait to go back to normal life, have Chinese food, and watch football on TV.
Lunch: Tuna salad with corn, a boiled egg, and beans (we are really digging into our pantry supplies)
Song of the day: Led Zeppelin - Misty Mountain Hop