When you feel the totality of all existence at a water park resort
What, am I the only one who has existential breakthroughs on a lazy river?
Spring break was not a thing when I was growing up. There was usually a four-day weekend around Easter in the North Dakota public schools, but as far as I remember that was it.
Imagine my surprise in college: A whole week off? As a freshman I took a spring break trip to California, sort of last minute.
It was done on the cheap, back when I had far more time than money, and it was amazing (except for the part about the multiple Goldschlager shots that someone at a party insisted I take because they incorrectly thought it was my birthday, and which ended up “re-gifted” after that hot cinnamon poison had done its worst).
As a responsible father now, with a little more money and a lot less time, spring break is far different. It is very much a thing in Minnesota public schools, as I learned when our oldest child, now 10, entered kindergarten.
The idea of taking a spring break trip is appealing. It is also nearly impossible because of our family’s schedule. I teach an adjunct class in the spring. My wife works at a university and is a PhD student taking classes.
Our spring break does not line up with that of our children, and their time off usually ends up being a mad scramble to keep them occupied and happy while our lives only slow down a little.
What we have the time and energy for at that time of year is a “staycation” of sorts, that wonderful euphemism for having a vacation without really going anywhere. The start of this year’s spring break also coincided with my wife and daughter’s shared birthday, so we stepped up the staycation game and booked a one-night stay at a local waterpark hotel.
We had stayed at Great Wolf Lodge once before, coinciding with a birthday party for my younger daughter’s friend, and ever since then they have sent promotional emails to entice “The Rand Pack” to stay again.
The only thing they are better at than water slides is persistence.
The Rand Pack happily booked a room, and I cautiously remembered that at places like Great Wolf Lodge a family can spend anywhere between the price of the room and infinity dollars depending on what other add-ons are agreed upon.
We are lucky, though, that our children are still very much tickled by simple things. The room had bunk beds, a major hit. And it had a small balcony overlooking the waterpark, unlike our previous stay. We could even log into our Netflix account on the hotel TV.
It was heaven.
The main event, of course, was as much waterpark time as we could conceivably cram into one afternoon and evening. (The answer, it turned out, was about five hours).
It was glorious fun. I love waterslides, and our oldest daughter talked me into doing the double tube slide with her many times. All of our kids love the wave pool, which simulates big crashing breakers.
Who even needs to go to California?
All of this is to say: A place like Great Wolf Lodge is designed for mindless, escapist, in-the-moment fun. It delivered that.
It is not a place that a person is likely to have a moment of existential clarity.
But it delivered that for me, too.
I had been reading Michael Easter’s “The Comfort Crisis” at the time of the stay, and I had just finished a chapter that talked about the extreme unlikelihood of all of us existing on Earth.
Writes Easter: “One scientist calculated the numbers and found that a person’s odds of being alive are 1 in 10 to the 2,685,000 power. The scientist explains that these odds are the same as having a group of 2 million people each roll a trillion-sided die and every roll landing on the same number.”
This is right in my wheelhouse. It does not take much to send me spinning into wonder, thinking about the beginning of time and big unanswerable questions like “Before there was anything, what was there and why is there now something?”
The journey from The Big Bang to now — approximately 13.8 billion years, technically also the length of the Vikings’ Super Bowl drought — is such a beyond comprehension path of cosmic wonder. It can’t help but make me feel both overwhelmed and grateful to have whatever time I have on Earth.
The framing in the book, though, was not something I could recall ever having read. There’s a concept of the “cosmic calendar,” which puts all of time since the Big Bang on a timeline of one year. Recorded human history, in this scale, begins on Dec. 31 at 11:59 p.m. and 33 seconds.
And so there I was, on one of our countless spins on the lazy river — orbiting, if you will, other water park features and an overpriced snack bar — having a moment.
Every person I looked at seemed like a marvel. I could feel everyone’s story, the unlikely journey every single person in that waterpark had taken just to be on that lazy river with us.
Their scars. Their glories. Their tears. Their laughs. From a tiny bit of nothingness that defied unbelievable odds to a fully formed being. (I should perhaps point out for clarity, too, that I was completely sober, as I often am these days).
A couple weeks later now, I don’t remember any of their individual faces. But I don’t think I will ever forget that experience. It was absurd and made perfect sense all at once.
I similarly will never forget a strange feeling I had once while driving through the western part of North Dakota, that a herd of buffalo was rumbling through the valley alongside my car.
Who knows why these moments hit us when and where they do. I certainly didn’t plan to feel the totality of existence at a waterpark hotel.
The mysteries of the universe, unlike the Vikings, remain undefeated.
Here’s a birthday shoutout to one of my most dedicated readers: my dad, who turns 70 today. If I notice that something I write here has a comment, especially within the first few hours of publication, I usually correctly guess it’s from Dad (and one of the first “likes” is almost always from my mom). May you all have a great day, but especially the birthday boy.
I saw Existential Rand at the Entry in ‘98, great show
Yes, to recognize the incredible odds of our being here naturally leads to appreciating what's around us in a heightened way--if a person has a half-full glass of life drink. And when that's coupled with a near-death experience (or more than one), the mind-blowingness seems too much to take sometimes. Life is precious, and if one realizes that fact, it makes actions like war, gun violence, discrimination, and other blights on our existences all the more wasteful. See things clearly, my fellow humans, and the world will be a better place.