Thoughts on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 2020. Well, here we are. The holiday hits home a little harder this year. 2020 has been a lot of things, but perhaps above all, it’s been a lesson. Suddenly the little, day-to-day things we took for granted in years past have been lost. Or taken away. The ability to do one’s job, for many, suddenly vanished. My mom works in a retail store; when the country shut down in the spring, she suddenly found herself out of work for months. Other family members lost jobs. I lost the ability to do my job… without international travel, being a traveling photographer and writer suddenly looks a lot more grim.

I had been on a remote shoot in Chilean Patagonia in late February and early March, away from a cell signal and wifi. Flying back to the States through Santiago, I remember watching a new broadcast about the novel coronavirus in the United States. People were just starting to worry. A month and a half prior, I had been wandering around New York City’s Chinatown, looking for a particular restaurant and taking in all the Chinese New Year decorations, not thinking twice about being jammed into subways on streets with thousands of people.

Never would I have imagined that now, nine months later, we’d all still be living in our own little bubbles, the world still shuttered.

But, you know, here we are.

I live by the airport here in Missoula, and since March I’ve been listening to the planes fly overhead (for a while, it was just a few a day), and have found myself absurdly grateful each time I heard the roar of engines overhead. It meant someone was going somewhere.

We adapt… it’s what we do.

And life moves on. There have been some really shit days and some really good days. Here are a few things I find myself thankful for this season:

• Fishing friends. I’ve been able to reunite with old friends to chase steelhead, make new ones to stalk trout here in Montana, and met an awesome group of guys who had traveled to Belize in October for the reopening. There’s still very little in life that’s better than spending time with good people on good water… whether the fishing is good or bad. (And Belize certainly didn’t let us down.)
• My tiny apartment. I live in a very basic, pretty small (about 500 sq. ft.) apartment here in Missoula. I signed the lease thinking I’d be on the road much of the year, and so the space was all I needed. Then, enter 2020. I’m spending a lot of time in a very small space. But I’ve never been so grateful for a warm, cozy place I can work from.
• Yoga. As part of a rehab program for a ruptured disk in my back,  I’ve picked up my yoga practice again. I have a small painting of a PBY flying over a surfer at dusk hung on the wall, and I point my yoga mat to face that image. It’s a good reminder there’s a bigger world out there during the cold, grey months here in Montana.
• The zero-dark-thirty swim squad. Also as part of a rehab program, I’ve been swimming two or three days a week. In the summer, it was in an outdoor pool here in Missoula—I’m a firm believer that sun on bare skin is a good thing, in moderation. Now that it’s winter, I’m doing laps in the city rec department’s pretty basic indoor pool. They’re only allowing four people in the facility at a time, and my 6AM morning slot is me and three very nice gentlemen in their 70s. We’ve had some compelling life discussions standing outside the building at 5:45 waiting for the lifeguard to let us in. Maybe not the swim squad I’d imagined, but definitely the one I’ve needed these past few months.
• Fly tying. Another old practice I’ve picked up. I tied as a kid and now, as an adult, it feels like productive craft time. I’m currently batch-tying Bunny Tarpon Toads and Gotchas in preparation for a return to Belize in January.
• French and Russian. Someday we’ll be traveling again. Getting back to Russia is high on my list, and French is spoken around the globe. So, I’ve picked up my high school French and am building on the Russian I learned during my season on the Ponoi. The free version of Duolingo has everything I need, and it’s been a good exercise to switch back-and-forth between the two.
• Great clients. During a year when all my international shoots after March were canceled (with the exception of El Pescador!) and many magazines have either ceased publication or were put on hold, I’ve very grateful for the clients who are rising from the ashes. I get to work with some incredible editors and clients all over the world, and certainly couldn’t do this work without them.
• And, last but certainly not least, family. I’m nearly four hours away from my nearest family (my brother and his family) and a half-day of flying from my parents. But I’ll always be thankful for the people I can be brutally honest with; the folks who talk me off ledges from time to time, and who put up with my occasional rants about logistics and life.

And thanks to all of you, who read gibberish like this that I write when I’ve had too many cups of coffee and my thought are just a little too loud. Here’s to whatever 2021 brings—at least we know it won’t be boring—and to finishing out 2020 with reminders of what’s really important in our lives.

So for my American friends, take a deep breath today and inventory the things that have made a difference this year. For my international friends, go ahead and do the same.