{"id":22615,"date":"2022-05-16T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=22615"},"modified":"2022-04-28T12:42:11","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T19:42:11","slug":"leaving-the-cave-hopeful-in-highlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2022\/05\/16\/leaving-the-cave-hopeful-in-highlands\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving the Cave<\/em>: Hopeful in Highlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since life is now becoming somewhat regular again\u2014we\u2019re not always wearing our masks, we can gather in larger groups\u2014I\u2019m curious as to how we all, as a student body, survived the past two years.<\/p>\n

I mean, what did the whole, very surreal, experience do to our fragile minds? What effect did isolation have on us, considering that we are naturally social creatures?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Leaving the Cave<\/em> is a column about returning to in-person learning in 2021 (photo by Emily Welch\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I thought I was going to be okay with isolation. I live already in a very isolated area, an obscure municipality called the Highlands, where the rain is heavier, the snow is snowier, the temperature is colder and, although Wi-Fi is now finally available, cell-phone service is spotty.<\/p>\n

Living in the Highlands is a magical yet sometimes treacherous experience. Magical when the wildflowers are blowing in a honey-scented breeze and baby animals with big, wide eyes, taking in the world for the first time, are spotted.<\/p>\n

The treachery happens when power goes out, or the driveway gets snowed in mid-winter, which just happens to be absolutely the wrong time to miss school, as it\u2019s during exams. There are equally hectic times when the water pipes freeze and we\u2019re literally without water, meaning we have to pump water out of a well, and we have to be very stingy with that water. Believe me, taking a sponge bath next to the ice-covered window while listening to my chattering teeth is not as quaint as it sounds.<\/p>\n

Although all of this sounds like a storybook, it\u2019s actually my life. Isolating during COVID when you\u2019re living a sequel to Little House on the Prairie<\/i> was super hard, but it made me super thankful that I had a home to isolate in, a home that was as interesting to talk about as it was to live in. This space in the Highlands has become a long-term friend to me and my brothers and sisters. We have this space to come to when we are sick, struggling, or just in need of some rest and relaxation. We\u2019ve always known that no matter what the situation, this property would be here, and that if the world gets too big and loud, we could always find peace and protection among the trees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since life is now becoming somewhat regular again\u2014we\u2019re not always wearing our masks, we can gather in larger groups\u2014I\u2019m curious as to how we all, as a student body, survived the past two years. I mean, what did the whole, very surreal, experience do to our fragile minds? What effect did isolation have on us, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,268],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-may-4-2022"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22616,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22615\/revisions\/22616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}