Isolated – in a good way

Let’s do something, we both agreed. And in the doing of something we ended up doing almost nothing.

My partner and I have stopped speaking with each other. Not due to animosity or pettiness or lack of anything to say, but because of this place.

We’re camping off-grid. But, you know, we’re very much part of the grid. The grid of nature. The interlocking patterns of the robust and magnificent Milky Way we marvelled at last night as we lay on huge, surprisingly warm, boulders after our posh camp dinner. The interlocking and enmeshed sounds of birds communicating with one another in a morning sky so still and silent that I can hear a leaf fall to the ground. I’m not talking about a heavy palm frond crashing to earth, but a thin, elegant gum leaf fluttering and spinning as it gently and carefully lands.

We don’t need to speak.

I haven’t had mobile reception for four days – by choice that is, not because my ancient eight-year-old phone has finally died. Aside from some initial worry about missing a possible untimely family member’s death or god forbid, an unpaid bill reminder, I’ve eased into a news-free, information-free, trash-free zone.

There’s no one here. Just us.

I thought I’d be more anxious about isolation. Not government enforced isolation, but rather, feelings of remoteness that growing up in a small country town might bring, FOMO, lack of options and, to some extent, boredom. But here, now, in this place out of touch with everything I’ve known until this point and yet more in touch with light, shape, colour and sound (oh, and taste – can’t forget that posh camp dinner), I’m not isolated, I’m centred, calm and feeling strong.

Doing nothing is actually doing a lot.