I Lived In A Tent For 3 Months. It Changed Everything….In A Good Way
It’s the summer of 2020. I’m unpacking my small overnight bag I’m not planning on staying long, three days maybe four max. I begin opening up the tent for the summer and quickly realize how relaxed I am. I hadn’t felt at ease or truly relaxed for months, even though I tried to find some peace. New York City has been so tense and sad throughout March, April and May yet now I needed to focus and set up the tent for the arrival of my parents coming in two weeks.
For the past 32 years my family has spent every summer at the Victorian beach town of Ocean Grove, New Jersey. Each summer my family, along with 113 other families also known as “tenters” by the locals, move in for the summer season. Our summer tent is connected to a cabin which houses a bathroom, kitchen, and living room. All the tents and cabins are set up and decorated differently and our tent neighbors over the years have become our extended family. Since we were in the midst of this horrific pandemic, I didn’t know how I would feel being there or even who would be coming to stay, as our neighbors come from far and wide each year. After a few days of settling in, I am feeling more relaxed than I thought I would. I quickly enjoyed seeing friends walking around town or speaking through the simple screen porch doors. It was such an incredible change of pace from the experience of living in NYC for the prior 3 months.
Not seeing friends, family, or anyone for months (besides my sweet doormen) and wearing our masks 24/7 wasn’t easy. It was heartbreaking. Our lives in the city changed so quickly. Many people lost loved ones and so many good friends and colleagues picked up and moved. It felt like our lives changed overnight. For many it did.
All of the sudden, weeks had gone by and I was still living in the tent. Wow, that went fast I thought. I kept telling myself I should go home to the city, but then thought why, there’s no one to see. People were not getting together socially, or for work, or for anything. I convinced myself to stay ‘just a few more days’ and then came the news that my parents weren’t going to come at all. My summer tent visits BC (before Covid) consisted of me coming down for the weekends to visit my parents and see friends, but I never stayed longer than a week at a time. I quickly realize that I have the tent for the rest of the summer, all to myself, and this is an immediate surreal feeling. I also had an overwhelming sense of guilt. I know how much my parents love this annual summer escape, as does my little sister, but they all chose not to take the drive up or fly up out of caution.
I found myself leaning in and adjusting to this new tent rhythm and my body felt good, I felt good. I was socializing outdoors with neighbors and lifelong friends by sitting on porches, in backyards, and it was so freeing and liberating. I decided to head back into the city to get more clothes and a few other items so I could just stay a bit longer, then quickly grabbed a train back to the shore. Tent living gives you a rare opportunity to experience and witness life through a softer, more connected lens. I would come and go for days without wearing shoes and I was living in my beach clothes and bathing suit every day. It was a big difference from my pre-pandemic life when I would be in dresses and heels most days, running to and from meetings all over NYC. I’m feeling so good, was it the fresh air 24/7? I realize I am living a truly outside life. More guilt was trickling over me for feeling this good in such an unreal moment in history.
It’s now mid summer and restaurants were just opening their doors to outdoor dining and that was a celebration in itself! I was running almost every day. I woke with or before dawn just so I could swim at sunrise, it gave way to a new fresh perspective on the day. I looked forward to each morning to watch the pageantry of the sunrise. The beauty to witness it, the colors different every day, the sky and ocean different every day. Each day a new painting. Some days I would just sit and pray and meditate, my heart full of gratitude, I knew what a gift it truly was. Other days, I would be in the ocean swimming while the sun rose, sometimes with a few others.
Being in the ocean at the same time every day, I was reveling in the gifts. I always felt like this time was that thin place between night and day and fell between the spiritual and the Earth space. The sun golden on one side and the moon on the other. I would return to my tent to start my day of Zooms and calls, and yes the tent has Wi-Fi but no TV and I was happy not to have access to all of the on-air disaster porn. I vowed not to watch anything, only to read when I needed.
Two months fly by and I’m feeling as if I am in this new symbiotic relationship with my space. I was in total alignment with body and space in a way that I certainly had never felt in my NYC apartment. This was totally different.
A renewal was happening. A new sense of time was happening. I was so in tune with the earth. The practice of grounding (not wearing shoes) was daily, as I really had nowhere to go and also knew, because of my work and studies in nature, how impactful this practice was for better physical and mental health. I knew exactly what time of day it was just by the daylight in and on my tent. Some nights at sunset, the magenta sky would turn my white canvas a matching color and take my breath away. I looked forward to rain storms because of how it felt inside the tent and the rhythmic beats of rain drops would lull anyone to sleep. There is nothing more soothing than the sound of rain on a canvas roof. The rain would also provide a cool breeze blowing through. I loved the cooler nights of June and September when it could be so chilly I would need to bundle up to sleep. The push and pull of the wind on the tent is a unique sound onto itself. The ropes holding the tent in place would hum and strain with the gusts.
I felt like for the first time I was living in complete harmony with my natural surroundings. This new natural rhythm maybe, just what my body and brain wanted all along. My hurried, often insane schedule of my former self had all but washed away. Who am I? Or maybe, who am I becoming? I had no need for high heels or make up and stopped blow drying my long hair altogether which took too long to blow out straight. I wasn’t stressed for the first time in such a long time. I had no FOMO. I was fully living in the moment and felt so connected to just being in it. There was a new vibration of living and being joyful, and it was so simple. I needed so little to live in this new found state of keen awareness.
I only went indoors when I would be back at my apartment and when taking the train or subway which was only 3 times during my 3 months of tent life. There was a deep sense of resonance that I was feeling to this moment in time and my experience in it. I knew it was a limited moment and maybe that is why it seemed so profound.
While nothing seemed normal there was a spiritual rhythm, a cadence to my days. There was no more rushing to and from. While I really missed my friends, there was a sense of ease when you live in a tent. For the first time, I was truly present in my days. My days now felt abundant in a brand new way. I would go to bed early and rise early.
Sunrises and sunsets meant something. Sitting on front porches meant something. Enjoying dinner in backyards meant something. Listening to the push and pull of the breeze on the tent canvas meant something. Walking barefoot meant something. I’d walk the same route a few blocks to a friend’s house just so I could gather lavender off a large bush to rub between my hands and then brush my fingers through my hair. Having that scent bring such joy, a tranquility, meant something. I replaced running to 5 pm NYC happy hours with reading on the beach at the end of the day. And this meant something.
The smallest moments often overlooked in the past all made my days magical, beautiful, and important, plus helped me feel grateful to be living in this space at this moment in time.
September quickly arrived and I began counting down the days I had left, like I was 16 years old again. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go back home. I have always loved the city and called it home, this feeling was new to me. It had become a different New York and a lonely New York.
Someone very close to me sent me a message at the beginning of my tent summer knowing I had been through a difficult spring. They said, “Such a consequential time for you. Inhale this respite. Find a way to make it pretty. To make it count. Find a way to make it meaningful, sublime, unexpectedly symmetrical, jagged and glistening, earthly, raunchy, delicate, and fine. Find a way.”
As the days in the tent came to an end for the summer season and I packed everything away until next year knowing 2021 would be very different, I was able to say, I found the way and it was sublime.
