Coaches on vacation
We haven't had a chance to get together this month for our 'Coaches in conversation', but we didn't want to miss a month so we bring you 'Coaches on vacation' instead! To read all our stories, have a look at our ‘postcards’ shared on LinkedIn.
Here is Anny’s postcard from the wild:
Being South African, this was probably always on the cards. We set out on our first wild camping experience in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park last year. Unlike traditional campsites, these were unfenced, remote and unconnected. The campsites were open to wildlife, so at night, lions moved freely nearby. The only function on my phone that was still usable was the camera.
We had to plan carefully and carry everything we needed – enough food, fuel and water. The journey itself was physically demanding. We got stuck often in deep sand, dug ourselves out more than once, and one day lost 12 litres of milk in the trailer. The roads are so bumpy that the milk boxes disintegrated from all the bouncing. Imagine the speed and thoroughness of the clean-up!
And yet, despite the difficulty, or perhaps because of it, something in me shifted.
Off-grid and offline, I noticed how sharply my senses came alive. I could hear the lions roaring at night and sense both their distance and direction. That capacity doesn’t exist for me in the city. It was as if nature invited a different kind of knowing, a different way of being. One not driven by urgency or productivity, but by presence.
We had time on our hands and yet the days were full. After a while we started naming the days after what they brought – ‘Melkvlei day, Leeuloop day, Ratelpan day…’ Naming gave shape and a shared sense of our experience. What could have felt like effort became a story. And somewhere in the mess and laughter, I noticed we were being restored.
This year, I’m heading out to Botswana, which is why I won’t be contributing to May’s article. But it felt right to offer this reflection instead.
Earlier this year I came across the concept of the psychologically rich life, one marked by variety, perspective shifts, and emotional depth (Oishi et al., 2020). This resonated with me. We didn’t plan the trip that way, but perhaps that’s exactly what we created: not ease or escape, but something energising and expansive.
