The Girl Who Was Never There and How She Totally Missed Everything

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Todd Cravens on Unsplash

Life via lens isn’t life, and it can steal your life. Here’s why

Dear Reader: If you’re a professional photographer or for that matter a travel blogger for whom photography is part of the job, this isn’t about you, just to be clear. This is about folks who can’t unglue themselves so that they’re actually living.

The tip of our two-man kayak curled around the outcropping, the rough rocks covered with seabird guano. Just off to our right was the seal colony. Behind us, our guides, and one other couple.

The woman behind me in our two-seater was Tina, a twenty-something from Great Britain, new to travel, new to kayaking, new to, well, apparently, everything.

We made our way quietly through the waves off Argentina’s Atlantic-facing Peninsular Valdez, where it was November, late whale-watching season. Far from where we were kayaking, large boats full of elderly folks and families donned bright orange safety vests and leaned over the railings to watch the mothers and their calves.

We were in the churning waters, practically next to what whales we might encounter. There’s a lot of excitement and a great deal of danger, as the mothers are highly protective. Our guides knew how to safely maneuver around these huge animals.

I’d taken white water kayaking lessons, had done some kayaking on the sea near Croatia, and was comfortable in our craft.

Tina had shown up with a very expensive (non-waterproof) camera, a huge tripod nearly as tall as she was, and a mass of camera equipment ill-suited for being on the ocean, to say nothing of all the room that it took up in our kayak, which we needed for our tents.

But she was a paying client, and our competent outfitter accommodated her. We put in, found our paddling rhythm, and followed our guides’ instructions.

At this point, we hadn’t seen any whales. I’ve got - okay I HAD- excellent distance eyesight, so was scanning both close in and far away. Tina was concentrating on her paddling.

Suddenly I heard cannon shot. Being a veteran, I jumped. Angered, I thought, who the hell is firing a cannon out here in the wild?

I turned towards our guides, who pointed. Off in the distance, a Southern Wright whale was breaching.

Deposit photos

I slowed our kayak to a stop. Most of us focused on the horizon, and watched as the next whale rose like a graceful behemoth. She landed with a powerful SLAP, which instantly traveled across the water like another cannon shot.

The hair rose on the back of my neck just as tears welled in my eyes. Who gets to see such things?

Not Tina.

I could hear her struggling behind me, pulling at her tripod (on a kayak?) and trying to set up her equipment.

Our three kayaks rested quietly. The other couple stared, as I did, as this phenomenon unfolded. The guides were just as transfixed, as this sight never gets old.

Behind me, Tina pulled and cursed and fumbled.

Suddenly it was all over. The whales stopped breaching. Tina cursed again, then started shoving all her gear back into the compartments. Our kayak rocked as she angrily forced her oversized tipod into the limited space.

Tina would do this over and over. No matter how hard I worked to keep our kayak steady, she complained that it was too bumpy.

I asked her what she’d expected. We’re on the ocean, I said. Oceans have waves, I pointed out.

She pouted. Pissed.

Unspoken but clear:

Who the hell are you anyway?

Someone who does her research, just saying. Someone who takes kayaking lessons before heading out to sea in a kayak, just saying. Because what are you going to do if a whale tips you over and you are upside down in your kayak and you have no clue out to get out of your skirt safely? Just saying.

But I didn’t. I’ve been a rookie, too.

By the end of our three days as a group, Tina didn’t have many photos. Her pricey camera gear couldn’t be safely removed while on the water without risking ruin. The guides finally convinced her; not my job.

On land, Tina missed chance after chance to photograph wildlife. She lugged thousands of dollars’ worth of camera gear from spot to spot, exhausting herself, scaring the wildlife away for everyone else, and never getting a single decent photo.

She let us know about it at the campfire every night.

It was the first time I’d seen first hand the trend that would take over a generation. The cell phone, armed with cameras which are now likely as good as anything Tina had bought back then, has replaced life.

This was back in 2015. Nine years later, the trend to try to prove an epic life instead of living an epic life has become an obsession. I’ve seen it all over the world, people so focused on looking like their lives are an endless highlight reel to their friends and followers that they only succeed in ensuring that it’s anything but.

Freya India

wrote a piece which caught my eye and inspired this story. I wanted to frame her piece with some of my observations from my first years of adventure travel.

I was shocked that people would spend a great deal of money to be in Chalten, Patagonia, yet sit all day in the hostel’s great room and skip precisely what they came there to do.

I didn’t understand the thinking. Still don’t.

Here’s her piece:

You Don't Need To Document Everything

On that same trip, I climbed Viedma glacier in Patagonia. While on that excursion, a couple demanded of all of the people in our group that they take selfie after selfie after selfie after endless annoying selfie of that couple, to the point where I finally refused.

This intruded on our experience. We didn’t pay a fortune to be on this trip to document their obviously empty life, that they have to document every movement.

Do they document their bowel movements, too?

Didn’t say it. Thought it.

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

Freya nails it for me here:

…those with real confidence and self-love don’t need to post thousands of selfies to prove it. And that truly empowered people don’t depend on external validation for every feeling or opinion or decision they make. Isn’t that just a basic rule in life? That those who are the loudest about their achievements and relationships and morality often have the most doubts about them? And if I know one thing it’s that if you’re experiencing a genuinely moving moment, if you’re really in it, the absolute last thing you want or think about doing is taking out your phone, cutting through it and cheapening it. The best love is quiet. The best confidence is quiet. And so are the lives with the most meaning.

Some of the most emotional, gut-wrenching and beautiful moments of all the years of my travel and those to come aren’t documented. They are instead seared into my heart, etched into my memories in ways that a lens cannot possibly capture.

Those are not for everyone else. They are mine.

I can write about them, but the intimacy of those gem-like seconds, and how they transformed my soul, will die with me.

That is how it’s supposed to be.

This week I was listening to NPR (The Rise and Consequences on “Sharenting) on family vloggers, the ugly scandals and the potential irreparable damage done to the child’s privacy long before the child even knows they have a right to privacy.

I find this so reprehensible, so unspeakable that I can barely breathe. Freya touches on this too.

What troubles me is that so many people, parents whom we are supposed to trust, are so willing to strip their kids of every conceivable right to be a kid so that they can be influencers. That’s just criminal.

I can understand part of what makes people want to monetize their lives, but not how they can justify pimping their children’s human right to a normal childhood. I will stop there, but for this:

I hope those children sue their parents’ pants off when they get old enough.

That is another perfect example of what’s coming, the unintended consequences of not respecting boundaries, and putting money above every other single point of decency available to us.

If you’re with me, you might look up Quit Clicking Kids.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Those who have to monetize every single aspect of their lives, who invade others’ privacy, who record and then upload material which has no business being aired, well, I have no polite words.

Back to 2015, and Tina’s lost trip

Tina was just uninformed and a rookie. I’ve been there too, and have made hugely ridiculous mistakes. Tina was so busy trying to document her epic trip that she largely missed the whole thing.

I hope with all sincerity that she was finally able to put her gear into a locker and find another gear, and as a result, actually enjoy her trip, with all the indelible memories available.

Photo by Rachel Jarboe on Unsplash Viedma Glacier

Life is an adventure which deserves our full engagement.

I happen to push that boundary very hard, which puts me all over the world. I get to observe people in those environments, like Tina, and folks who are so focused on having their cameras tell their life stories for people who don’t give a shit- Freya is right, they don’t- that they are robbing themselves of life.

Too many of those people not only eat their young, but they are eventually eaten by the monster they created.

For those who may have missed this article about how influencers end up being consumed by their audiences, here it is again from

Gurwinder

:

The Perils of Audience Capture

Tina just screwed up one part of her trip.

Too many of us are screwing up our lives, and criminally ruining the lives of people too young to know better. Let’s put the phone down. Let’s live. Life speeds by us so swiftly that by the time we realized we’ve missed too much of it, there may not be much left to live.

Let’s play, please.

Mt. Fitzroy, Argentina Deposit photos

Thank you for traveling with me a bit today. I hope you were moved to be more in life, put down the phone and let life lift you high. It does that. If my article did that please consider

If you know someone who might need this message, please also consider

Either way, kindly put down the phone and play.