Phew. What a year 2020 was. I’m really struggling to find the words to describe the year in a concise way. The world was heavy, and we have all been feeling the weight of it. It’s felt a lot like a rollercoaster, every month or so getting that falling feeling in your stomach, and then you ride back up but waiting for the next drop never knowing when to expect it. COVID19, BLM riots, Beirut, and political drama everywhere, all the time.
While the year was certainly a crazy one, I know that I am one of the lucky ones and truly can say that 2020 was not all bad for me. Here’s a little about how it went:
Most of January was spent preparing for a 6 week trip to Chile, Argentina, and Peru in South America. I met Steve in Santiago, Chile in early February. We rented a truck from Wicked Campers and road tripped from the city up through the Atacama Desert. After that we travelled down to Patagonia, where Steve and I got engaged at the base of Mirador Las Torres in Torres Del Paine National Park at sunrise.
After another week and a half Steve’s time was up and he flew back to Australia for work, while I kept travelling up into Peru solo. Once in Peru COVID19 seemed like more of an issue, with rumblings of cases emerging in Latin America. Being close to my departure date, I continued my trip and got to experience Macchu Picchu four days before I flew home to Canada.
Ha. Little did I know that I had miraculously chosen my return date perfectly before every single flight out of Peru and Chile was grounded on March 15th, leaving thousands of travellers stranded. I made it as far as Calgary before I noticed myself feeling under the weather, and ended up isolated in a hotel room there for 8 days before receiving a negative test.
Once I was back in Canada was when the reality of the global shit storm really began to set in. This was a new normal, and things weren’t going back to the same as they were before.
In the aftermath of most my weddings from 2020 being postponed, I was gifted with a lot of time to refocus my priorities and reset my brain. I did a lot of hiking, art making, gardening, baking, and exploring the backroads on my little Yamaha TW200. There were many socially distant social gatherings around fires, lake days, and camping trips.
We planned our own intimate covid wedding for September, the whole time worrying that restrictions would tighten up and force us to cancel. Actually though, we just slid through after we got married on September 20th before things really started to get out of control.
After that, we got word from Steve’s company that they were offering to fly families down to Australia for the season. Since due to the expensive tickets and quarantine restrictions of both sides, flying back and forth really was not an option. So now here I am in Australia about to ring in the new year! It’s kind of ironic that the most travelling I’ve ever done in my life was during 2020.
So with all of that said, I know I was one of the lucky ones. I have my health, my family, a wedding photography business I can return to, and a community I get to be a part of.
While nothing will actually change when the clock strikes midnight at the end of this year, I would like to exit 2020 on a happy and hopeful note. There will be no collective change or reset button to be pressed. But we can still continue on with our goals and dreams and be some positivity in this dark world.
