Stranded in an Airport Wilderness

I had just spent three days in Nashville. It was not by choice. I’m not a country-music person. I’m not a southern-culture person. I have no desire to see the Grand Ole Opry (no disrespect intended). Nashville just is not on my list of places to visit. My partner and I were visiting one of our children in Tennessee, were being good parents, and were heading home. But instead of going back north to Rhode Island, we spent three days in Nashville. A recent snowstorm forced us to hole up in a Holiday Inn Express and enjoy all that Nashville had to offer within a one-mile radius from the hotel (more airport hotels and three gas stations). We were among the thousands that were stranded because of the recent snowstorm. This was the first time in my travel experiences that I have been stranded for more than one night and it seemed to me to be a kind of wilderness experience. I was reminded of what the wilderness can bring out of people.

            To be clear, this kind of wilderness was not one of great suffering. We were not refugees by any standard when compared with those who are migrants, war refugees, families seeking asylum, or any of the other millions of people who are living in a precarious liminal space. In this wilderness I joined thousands of somewhat privileged individuals, middle and upper-middle class of Americans subjected to live in a wilderness of airport hotels for a couple of days. Some were forced to postpone their vacations to islands, to tropical locations, to paradises. Others were trying to get home, to get their family pet in an extended boarding situation, to return to their infant and toddler children, or to get their special-needs child back to a place of normalcy. My partner and I were visiting one of our children, I was able to do a little backpacking in the Smokey Mountains (a much more hospitable wilderness than airport-land) and were returning to work, meetings, children still at home, and our own sense of normalcy. We did not have any small dependents waiting for us. We did not have any family pets relying on us. We were just in the limbo of hotel-land.

            I want to be clear, as much as it was an inconvenience, as much as it was far less than the ideal, it was not a tragedy or a place of suffering, or a hell-scape on earth. At worst, we were in a kind of Ingmar Bergman, Samuel Beckett kind of limbo with a twist of Sartre’s No Exit. A bit absurd. A bit repetitive. But not awful.

            It still was a wilderness kind of experience. There was a level of unknown and uncertainty which feeds a sense of fear. There was a reality to the struggle that everyone was encountering. We found ourselves individually and collectively thinking and wondering about the basics of survival, of shelter and food. I have been in wilderness situations before. I go into them willingly. Yet never like this.

            There is something about a wilderness experience that removes walls and facades and brings out the best and the worst of people. And I happily share that in this experience (as well as in many other wilderness experiences) I have seen more of the better than the worst. There were moments when I saw people yelling and cursing out of frustration, helplessness, and anger. I saw the fomenting of what could have become an angry mob at one gate when people heard their flight was cancelled. It was a flight to Boston. People in Boston have a reputation of being angry, and I found myself wondering if the same reaction would have happened if it was a flight to Duluth. But those negative, anger-filled moments were only a handful.

            When I’m in the wilderness and I encounter other people there is a bond of community that feels immediate. We have all chosen to be in that space. We made a deliberate choice to wander for miles into the mountains or the desert, to camp in the snow and the rain, and the struggles are shared. In the airport and in the hotel, this wilderness was only meant to be a transition, a wasteland, a liminal space that brings one to or from a promised land. But when one hour becomes forty hours, when one day becomes a month, when a year becomes a generation, our attitudes and approaches change.

            I was pleasantly surprised at the directions that attitudes changed. There seemed to be an overwhelming sense of decency and respect towards humanity. For me, this experience started when someone handed me my charger that I absentmindedly left on a seat at one of the gates. We tried to extend the same kind of decency by offering to give someone we did not know a ride from Boston to Rhode Island (which never came to fruition because we never got on that flight). People were giving up their spots in line, offering space at a table for others to sit. And the customer service went beyond anything one could ask or expect.

            I need to have a specific moment for all those I encountered in the service industry. From the pilots and flight attendants, to the people working the ticketing gates, the hotel management and cooks and cleaning crew, and serving staff, and everyone else we encountered, the effort was amazing. Phone lines were full with a two-hour wait and there was a calm and patient voice on the other end when I finally got through. Hotels were full, food was scarce, demands were high and the efforts of everyone working to help out was amazing. We experienced the best of service on every end and instance. Smiles and apologies were in abundance, even though the second was not needed. I am sure that there were some who were a little short, who were a little brusque, but I did not see it or encounter it.

There have been times that I have been leading groups in the back-country and it was raining or snowing or just not great weather and part of my job to make sure tents were set up, stoves were started, people were getting changed and were ok. I have stood in knee-deep water to offer a hand to someone who was having a difficult time crossing, I have carried multiple backpacks, all to make sure that the people I was leading and taking care of would be ok. These are moments of putting your own discomfort aside, your own worries aside, and helping the person you are serving. This was the kind of service I saw and experienced. The people who were serving, cleaning, tending, setting things up, driving us to the airport, also had to brave the snow and the cold. They were also wondering about what the next day might bring, how they might get home, and I am sure they had their own levels of worries and concerns, fears and anxieties. And yet again and again I saw and experienced the compassion and service that makes me hopeful for humanity.

Hopeful for humanity. This is not an easy phrase or idea for me to embrace. Even when I consider my roots of faith, I can have a difficult time feeling hopeful for humanity. During this snowstorm the Iowa Caucuses happened, officially launching the 2024 presidential season. In our political climate we have heard attacks and insults, doom and gloom, and anger. It is difficult for me to be hopeful for humanity in an election season with the rhetoric, hatred, and division in the background. And yet the snowstorm and an inflicted, imposed wilderness gave me hope.

One of the words and names for the wilderness that I embrace is from the Hebrew – midbar. This name does not suggest a desolate wilderness, but instead one where God is found and encountered. It is a place of revelation and inspiration. In the midbar a Word from the divine is heard and experienced. One of the reasons I go into the wilderness is to hear, to receive a word and to help others hear a word from a place of the sacred. Hope is not a difficult word for me to find in the back-country wilderness that I am used to. I have seen hope abound. I have read about and witnessed people in the back-country rally together to find a lost hiker, to help someone who is struggling from exposure, to offer compassion, food, shelter to someone who is in a scary and difficult place. I am awed by the experiences and the stories, but never surprised. On the rainy days I still find a glimpse of a blue sky. Hope is something I can find in the midbar. Hope is a word I often hear in the wilderness.

In this wilderness of a snowstorm and airport limbo I was surprised because I heard a similar word. We were all struggling. Everyone had a story of difficulty and no one was trying to suggest that they had it worse than anyone else. We were all wanting to get somewhere else, wanting to leave Nashville. And there was an empathetic realization that we were all in the same place that I saw and encountered. This gives me hope. This was the word that I heard and experienced in a surprising way in the wilderness of airport land. There was hope.

I want to be clear, this was not just a hope that we would all be able to leave, but more a hope that there is goodness in humanity. It was not a forward-looking hope resting on a promise that things would change, but a present, in-the-moment hope that people can be good and can be good towards each other.

I know that the community will not last. I know that we will return to our home, that people will get to their vacation spots, to their work, to their lives and the forced communal experience will diminish. The word will diminish and become a whisper in our memories. We will return to our partisan political corners, we will rebuild our tribal facades and recreate our walls. We will all find a way out of the wilderness of airports and hotels and back into the dry wasteland of bills and screens and demands and expectations. We will not see each other again. The community of the Holiday Inn Express will be gone. The wilderness of the moment, will be gone. The hope I found in Nashville will become a whisper and a memory.

There is something about the normalcy of the front-country that brings us to a place of compliancy and apathy. We work so hard to get out of the wilderness, out of the unknown so we can return to a place where we only consider our friend and family bubbles, our lives, and what is best for us. When we are in the ease and comfort of the front country the word becomes selfish, it focuses on the ego, and we no longer realize that we are in the same experience together. And I will have to go into the back-country to find the kind of hope that I saw and experienced in Nashville.

As I’m writing this I’m on an airplane right now, finishing this post and finally finding my exit from the Nashville limbo. I am finding myself settle back into the social customs and practices that lead me to question, that feeds my skepticism, and that makes me look askance towards my fellow travelers. It is not on purpose, but the reality of the buffering that occurs through the technology, the cultural practices, and the reality of the front country. It took us almost two hours to take off because of engine complications and the cold and all the other reasons mumbled by the pilot that I only half-listened to. I was more aware of the changes that were happening with me and that I could only assume was happening with others. With each minute in the air, the airport community was shedding away. I imagine when we land people while jump out of their seats, grab their luggage, and do what they can to be the first person out of the airplane. I hope someone will offer to get luggage for someone else, but I do not expect it. We are not in this together anymore, but are against each other once again. Hope has become a whisper and a memory. Maybe I’ll take a minute and let someone get in front of me. Maybe I’ll do something unknown and unexpected to be good towards someone else. Maybe I’ll hold onto the word that I received from these past couple of days. Maybe I’ll still have hope.