Issue #236: the best reading spot we’ve ever seen?! 🏞️

Hi there,
 

I’ve always loved traveling alone. Before the pandemic, that’s how I got grounded. Solo trips can seem intimidating, but there’s truly nothing that makes you feel like the center of the universe quite like popping in your headphones, cueing up your perfect soundtrack, and disappearing into the backdrop of a new landscape, where the judgmental eye of social expectation seems to shut for a while. A few weeks ago, having just experienced the most frenzied, anxiety-heightening few months of my life, I found myself desperately itching for an escape to reconnect with my body and quiet my mind.

Long story short: In June, I published a book called Cultish, and the launch process was madness—of course, witnessing your book baby leave the womb of your Google Drive and enter the physical world is extremely fulfilling, but it’s also not natural to spend a year and a half isolated in quarantine, and then all the sudden, ka-blow: interviews, reviews, and DMs pouring in every hour from every direction of the internet. Exciting as all the fuss was, I started to feel like a hologram version of myself—an uncanny bot representing “Amanda Montell,” rather than a human person with a body and feelings (and limits). Embarking on a lone journey somewhere far away in nature abruptly became an urgent priority.

In late August, it finally happened: I blocked off my calendar, set a vacation responder, and flew to Asheville—a wellness hub in North Carolina’s lush Blue Ridge Mountains. I went on a jubilant, yet gentle hiking-and-yoga excursion, meditated in a restorative salt cave, and cleansed both my skin and my stressed-out vibes in a Turkish-inspired hammam. I ate vegan comfort food and drank half my weight in kombucha. As for lodging… oh, how to describe Junebug Retro Resort: If someone reached inside my soul, took a photo, and 3D printed exactly what it needed, it would be this cottagecore fantasyland—an enchanting expanse of shamrock-green grass lined with refurbished vintage campers. Beyond them lies a kaleidoscopic garden, a secret treehouse, and perhaps the single most magical reading spot I’ve ever encountered: a chorus of white hammocks suspended over a babbling brook (see photo above!). 

I harbored a teaspoon of fear that no matter how lovely my surroundings, I still wouldn’t be able to shed the wasp’s nest in my mind; but, within a couple hours of settling into the blue mist, my hologram self quickly began turning back to flesh and bone. The old me. At one point, I caught myself in the mirror and looked like a bright-eyed little kid—the power of fresh air and perspective. In the mountains, I was totally alone but not at all lonely, a feeling I’d grown all too familiar with spending day after day inside, glued to screens, interacting with hundreds of strangers but never feeling the warm glow of their smiles or the dewy thrill of grass between my toes. Without social media or the pressure of being “on,” I discovered that sometimes the key to connecting to the present is simply holding no opinions in your brain but your own (at least for a short while).

On the last day of my trip, I came up with a little hymn for when I got back home and life invariably turned hectic again: You have nothing to do/You have nowhere to go/You have nothing to prove/You have no one to show/Just breathe/Just be. 

In the end, my solo mental health voyage was a welcome reminder that though I am grateful for my readers and love my friends and partner dearly, in the end, I am my own best adventure buddy. And no matter what life brings, I always will be. — Amanda Montell