“Why did you leave?”
As I travel around, I am asked this question very often.
Before the pandemic, I had a job as a naturalist. While that might sound like I spent my days without clothes, it was actually a job working with kids as an employee of Los Angeles county.
A naturalist, in this context, is a type of outdoor educator. I had worked as a teacher both in the classroom and in outdoor settings but being a naturalist was different.
As a teacher, I would have a lesson planned, or at least outlined, and then direct my students so that they could learn the intended concepts of the lesson. As a naturalist, I spent my day hanging out in the woods with some kids.
I would start my days with a guitar in my hand to play a concert for kids a few steps from the house that was provided to me by the job. We would sing songs about squirrels and oak trees!
I was a rock star with daily gigs and some great crowds. The best part was that the kids were instructed to sing with us, so any kid I looked at while I was performing would eventually start singing with me! We called the band The Pine Nuts and every kid who ever came to outdoor school was a part of it. With hundreds of members over the course of the season, it may hold the record as the biggest band ever.
After the concerts, I would take a group of kids on a hike through the woods. We would stop whenever a kid said “Wow!” and whatever grabbed their attention was the lesson for that moment. These Wow Walks allowed the kids’ curiosity to direct our day until the sun reached a certain point in the sky and we would head back to the main campus.
The students and I would practice a method called “The 3 I’s” in which they would finish sentences that started with the following prompts:
- I notice _____
- I wonder _____
- It reminds me of _____
Soon enough, the kids were pointing out phenomena in nature, making hypotheses about it, and referencing previous observations. We were a group of philosophers walking through the woods! It felt like my best work happened when it seemed like I was doing nothing at all.
Nature Naps were regularly a favorite activity and were exactly what you’d expect. The kids were instructed to go sit someplace away from other kids bit within sight of me and to be quiet. It is indescribable to watch a kid who has never tried to sit in silence react to a bird landing on a nearby branch or a squirrel walking in front of them.
The purpose of my job was proven in the wonder in the eyes of those kids. My job was to teach children how to chill in nature by providing them a feeling of safety and freedom.
So, why did I leave?
In March of 2020, I was informed that all Los Angeles schools were going on hiatus and that the rest of the season of outdoor school was canceled. Not only was I officially unemployed, I was told I had a week to move out of my house.
The reason schools were closed was to allow the population to stay at home by order of the government. Meanwhile, I was told I was not allowed to stay in my home. The cherry on top of all this nonsense: it was a church that owned the camp and told us to get out! They told us it was “a matter of liability” and preferred the house to be empty rather than let us live there.
A few days prior, I had been down the mountain and saw the eerily empty streets of the normally overcrowded sprawl of southern California. Even the homeless people were oddly absent from the streets and I had heard rumors that police were rounding them up and bringing them to shelters. Obviously, someone believed that bringing large groups of people together in shelters was an excellent way to slow the spread of a contagious disease.
Now that I was jobless and homeless, I didn’t want to take my chances living in my car in the spooky empty streets of the city. Instead, I decided to head to the desert for a bit to try to wait out the shutdown.
In the Mojave Desert, I had nothing but time. I was used to performing daily concerts for kids so I spent my time playing guitar for the lizards that would peek out from the cracks in the rocks.
After a week of isolation in the desert, I was ready for some change. I was tired and hot and dirty and was scrolling through the ridiculously high prices of rooms to stay when I got a call from my mom.
“Just come home,” she said, “It’ll probably just be a one month thing…”
I believed her and decided to drive back across the country to North Carolina. On the way, I noticed that every state seemed to have different instructions for its citizens regarding this new disease. Some states advised full quarantine, others barely mentioned it.
After a month in my parents’ house, it was clear that this “one month thing” was going to be a lot longer than everyone expected. I found myself a sublease in an apartment in a college town near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was a great deal and I got the whole place to myself! The downside: I had to spend the first three days cleaning the place from the gross college kids who left it for the summer.
At the halfway point of my two month sublease, I heard a knock at the door. I opened it to a man I don’t recognize who decided to skip an introduction and curtly said, “Inspection.”
I reacted with a momentary jolt of panic since I had just taken a bong hit in a state where weed was still illegal. He also seemed to feel a bit of panic from my reaction.
“Oh, I didn’t know there would be an inspection,” I said, trying to put out a more friendly vibe. He told me that he sent a text message and I admitted that I didn’t get it since I was on a sublease from the renter.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” the man grumbled. I invited him inside and he walked around the apartment inspecting the water faucets and electrical outlets. Had I not said anything or not been home at the time, I would have had nothing to worry about; but the damage had already been done.
My moment of panic caused a feeling of unease in the inspector. Although he was a private contractor working with the apartment complex, he decided to tattle on me to the administration.
An hour after this interaction, I got a phone call from the original renter of the apartment who told me that I had two days to be out of the apartment. As “a matter of liability,” the administration preferred to keep the apartment empty rather than let me stay. I had heard that same reasoning a bit too recently.
Somehow, during a nationwide stay-at-home order during a pandemic, I was kicked out of my home twice.
The lesson:
I am still working on understanding this one. For now, I will accept that this is the way and all the things that happen outside of my control give me an opportunity to grow. I will trust that the path I take based on my reactions to the world around me is the best path for me.
“So, why did you leave?”
Well, it seems that I was not meant to stay there.
Comments, Questions, and Random Thoughts