My Grounding Era

In my mind, I’ve deemed this past summer as my “Grounding Era” after escaping my hometown and embarking on an off-the-grid adventure. Last January, my parents signed me up for a two-week backpacking trip on a remote island in Lake Superior, Michigan, called Isle Royale, after receiving a hesitant “sure” from me. They had met each other on a backpacking trip in college and were incredibly enthusiastic about this opportunity for me.
 My uncertainty originated from a few key aspects of the trip. One, I would live alone in the woods with several people I didn’t know yet for two weeks. Two, I would be hiking between five and eleven miles a day (which seemed like a lot to a novice backpacker like myself) with a fifty-pound backpack on foreign terrain— with these same unknown people. And three, this was a device-free trip, and two weeks without my cell phone was the longest I had been away from it in probably the past three years. Of course, other aspects of backpacking seemed a bit daunting, like practically carrying your life on your back and committing to not having a real shower or toilet for weeks on end.
 As the time drew nearer to take off this summer, my mom pulled out her old sixty-five-liter backpack and gear she had used back in college on that same trip she and my dad met each other on. I read aloud the printed-out packing list as my mom laid out the mess kits, sleeping pads, sleeping bags, carabiners, paracord, and mini toiletries. Even though I was a rookie, you could count on me not showing up unprepared.
 For the few weeks leading up to my trip, I asked my grandparents endless questions about Isle Royale, their honeymoon location back in the ’60s. The only thing I learned was that it’s extremely buggy and that Lake Superior is cold, which did nothing but skyrocket my nerves as every scenario possible played out in my head.
 And yet, I soon found myself hugging my grandparents goodbye on the stoop of Moose Hall, where I’d be momentarily meeting my fellow backpackers and two guides. On that first day, I sat in a circle around a map of the island I would soon find so familiar beside seven new faces I’d become inseparable with. There were two other girls and three boys, all of us fifteen. We had one tour guide who appeared to us as though he was born in the woods, Tanner, and the other, Megan, seemed as though she had traveled around the world and back again doing everything under the sun.
 After discussing our hiking routes, our guides laid out gear scrolls—large posters with pictures of everything we needed. We then adorned the scrolls with designated gear. It became clear to me that four of the other hikers were experienced in this process as they talked hiking with the tour guides. I would learn later they had backpacked together to other islands off of Michigan and taken a canoe trip down the Manistee River and in Tennessee.
 As we repacked our packs, we were given a massive pile of food that would last us and the group for two weeks. My overconfident self heaved the over-spilling pack onto the scale to find it nearly fifteen pounds heavier. So while the rest of the participants loaded their reasonably-sized packs into the van, I spent the next half-hour debating which of my outfits and swimsuits I could let go of, and if I could make do without a hairbrush, mirror, or eyelash curler. Once this painful process was over, I had knocked off ten pounds to get my pack to a bearable sixty-one pounds. The six of us piled into a twenty-year-old van with peeling paint and a rusty Texas front license plate.
 Having to spend three days crammed in a van with no working AC, desperate for some form of online entertainment, to then spending six monotonous hours on a ferry across Lake Superior, meant my anxiety had fully melted by the time we reached the island. I already felt so incredibly safe and comfortable with this group of prior strangers.
 We spent the next nine days on the island, hiking a total of 64 miles, spotting two wolves, learning to mimic loon calls, and swimming daily in the largest body of freshwater in the world. There is something rare about the connections you can forge with the people you spend time with in the middle of the wilderness. You adjust to being and expressing the most vulnerable parts of yourself, which leads to a sort of intimacy you gain in no other friendships.

I often found myself wondering about a species of moss, an animal range, the weather, my location, or a random bird call, and having the instinct to whip out my phone and “ask Google” only to find my back pocket empty. Without this instant access to endless information on the internet, the separation forced me to draw on prior knowledge to form my own hypothesis about the world around me.
 When we returned to Moose Hall, where we stayed the last twenty-four hours of our trip, Tanner distributed two pieces of paper to each of us and we were instructed on one to write what we had gained from Isle Royale, and on the other what we intended to leave behind.
 I wrote, “the constant worry about the future is something I have no intention of clinging to after leaving the island. If anything, Isle Royale has taught me to live in the present moment and be satisfied with the unknown.” When some of us shared with the group, another person’s topic prompted me to say, “I also plan to leave behind my quick-judgment I lay on people when I only read their covers. Getting to grow so intimate with everyone on this trip revealed to me the inner story we all carry and the beauty in everyone when they’re their most vulnerable selves.”
 I had nearly twice as much to take with me. I made lists upon lists of new recipes that I couldn’t wait to bring home for their simplicity and creativity. My favorite breakfast meal, which is now my go-to when I am running late for school in the morning, was instant oats bedazzled in almost anything and everything in your pantry: peanut butter, chocolate fudge, hemp seeds, chia seeds, walnuts, spices, granola, cereal, banana, anything. Lunch on the trail was often what us backpackers called a “dirtbag,” a tortilla slathered in peanut butter, with trail mix, pretzels, goldfish, cheese, and summer sausage piled on. I’ve found myself throwing these various ingredients into a lunch container a few times already this school year.
 The beauty in simplicity came through so much more than food; limiting the weight on our backs meant the absolute bare minimum in clothing and toiletries. I learned the essentials for survival and adopted a minimalistic mindset, only wanting what I needed. In a society where over-consumption is perpetrated at such a momentous scale, it’s so important to limit what we consume to what we find practical and necessary.
 Gratitude was the most superior gift Isle Royal gave me. Spending just one night in Moose Hall already accentuated so many leisures I take for granted: eating to-go pizza for dinner, listening to on-command music, sleeping on a comfortable couch, having hot and filtered water on tap, getting to shower under a shower head with soap, getting a flushing toilet with toilet paper only a few steps away, getting to leave my food and toiletries lying around at night because no animals can get to it inside a secure log cabin. I reaped gratitude for what could be deemed the simplest things in life; for the ease they offer.
 In just a few short weeks, I felt utterly restored. Coming out of my first year of high school, anxiety and anticipation were at their peak. Dedicating this time to myself was the best act of self-care I have ever engaged in. Escaping from the outside world and cutting myself off from communication, social media, my family, and friend drama was a much-needed detox.
 Returning home was a bittersweet experience, as coming home from any away-camp often is. You miss your friends but are elated to take a real shower, lie in your own bed, and eat your family’s food again. I felt like I was returning from a safe and secluded fairy haven to the intimidating real world. This couldn’t have been exacerbated more than when I finally dug out the cell phone I’d left hidden in the back of my closet. While it took me a while to even remember my phone existed, there eventually evolved that subconscious voice— wondering, just wondering, how many notifications one could get in two weeks and what could possibly be going on in drama land. This was the voice I had learned to suppress on my trip, and, as it resurfaced, I consciously noticed its hunger for attention and inclusion on the internet and how much it influenced me.
 Nonetheless, in the remaining weeks of summer, I had the best relationship with my phone ever. My screen time plummeted, and my number of pickups halved. I was no longer desperate to be checking views and notifications. I hadn’t even turned on notifications on any apps until school began. I hardly brought my phone out of the house anymore.
 Simultaneously, I was the happiest I’d been for a while. I realized how much of a burden and stress my online life had been. Not feeling as though I needed my phone was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. I believe that our entire generation should go through the same formative experience of living “unplugged,” as it would be medicine to our often unhealthy attachment to and reliance on screens. Doing it in such a beautiful, natural place as Isle Royale is only a bonus.