Portrait Projects
Between June 2021 and June 2022, while the world was still reeling from the Pandemic that engulfed us all, my husband and I traveled the Great American Loop in our small motorboat. This 6000 mile journey travels along the rivers, canals, lakes and intracoastal waterways of the eastern United States. Along the way I met many people whose lives were linked to the water and I was curious how they fared during the COVID lockdowns. I asked them: “what did you learn about yourself during the Pandemic?”
T and K, Loopers, Port Huron, MI
Kate: I think broadly what I learned or was reinforced, especially being on this trip, there are things that people want to do or you want to do and I think you have to stop thinking of the reasons why you can’t do it and start thinking of the reasons how you can do it and if you start putting things out there, if it’s right, then it’s going to happen. There are so many different versions of the Great Loop for people, it’s not just I’m going to buy a boat and take a year off, you know, it could be I want to start this business or I really want to start learning something new or this hobby—there are so many reasons why you can’t do but I think if you think of it as being empowered by being in charge of your own schedule and what you want to do, life is short, life can change so quickly, as we’ve all learned, then why not?! You’ve got to figure out how to do it. And also I think of how important it is to be nice and how easy it is and how much of a difference it makes. One of the things I have valued over the last year is how important relationships are. Like our mechanic Michael, someone I wouldn’t have ever met, you know, and building a relationship with him, you know, this 71 year old man, who is now like an uncle and who has helped us along the way but how much of treating other people with respect, helping to solve a problem together, it just makes such a huge difference.
Tim: I think what I learned in 2020 about myself is I thought about what the year could hold at the beginning of the year and how it was so different. I spent so much more time with my family and my wife than I ever expected. 60 days into the pandemic we’ve never spent so many consecutive days with each other: one of us was traveling or on business or living somewhere else. We were with each other and different members of our family and that was a whole new dynamic but also something that felt so blessed to be a part of and to have that opportunity because it was never part of the plan but it was something that I cherished in 2020 in a year that was super crazy. That’s a big takeaway for me was to being able to have that time was something that helped Kate and I to make a decision and change the path and to value the time we have together instead of finding another reason to put off for another year. There’s like an urgency coming out of 2020 but in a different way. And I think that was it for me.
Kate: So 2020 we were living in New York but we were on a ski trip and the ski resort closed so we drove back together, across the country from Wyoming but we didn’t know where we were driving to. We were like, do we drive back to our apartment? We both worked from home but New York was blowing up, COVID-wise, do we drive to our parents but is that putting people at risk? And whose parents do we go to so we decided to go back to my parents and we were there for two months, living out of the ski bags we had brought with us.
Tim: we took the snow tires off the car in June! So that shows the mentality of where we were which was like-hey we’re going to figure this out. It was such a great time to do it, in a world that was wildly different and upsetting in a whole bunch of different ways.