A chance meeting at Angel’s Landing, and the power of a simple conversation

ANGEL’S LANDING, Mount Zion – Delaney and I have gone camping a lot recently. If you follow one or both of us on social media, this probably isn’t news to you. Honestly, we don’t know exactly why we do it. Just two weekends ago, thrashing through an overgrown trail in Fillmore, swatting bugs, filtering river water to cook food on our portable stove, Delaney openly wondered why we love it all so much.

The reasons why are nearly endless. She knows it and so do I, though the one that is the easiest to articulate is that getting into nature – woods, beach, mountains, canyons, you name it – provides a peace you just can’t get anywhere else. The noise of our cacophonous world is muted. You don’t need to know the latest update on Covid-19, and if you felt the urge to pull out your phone, you couldn’t get it anyway. There’s no service where we like to go. Don’t need to know a death toll, or what this scientist is saying, or what that news outlet is chirping. All you need to know is: Are we going the right direction?

Most of the time, I don’t even know the answer to that.

When we descended from Angel’s Landing in Mount Zion National Park this past Friday, that peace was, briefly, under threat. At the base, called Scout’s Lookout, we ran into a group of three – a tanned 27-year-old guy in a bucket hat named Memo, a 38-year-old black man with blond hair named Femi, and a 54-year-old black woman named (and I apologize if I butcher the spelling here) Areallya. We chatted amicably for 20 or so minutes, about the trail, the view, the heat, covering all the normal stuff backpackers and hikers do. Then Memo noticed my wife’s hat – unmistakable red, with “Make America Great Again” in white lettering, covered up in part by her sunglasses. He asked what it said. She read it with a smile.

He smiled back, said that’s what he thought, that he was a Trump fan too. You never do know what you’re going to get when you acknowledge that you support the current President of the United States. Especially now. We didn’t have service, so we didn’t know how much the riots had escalated across the country, and how tense things were.

“I don’t like your guy,” Femi said, honestly, smiling, “and I’m sure you don’t like mine.”

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because over the course of the conversation, all of us, especially Femi, lit up. Here we were: three white conservatives, two black democrats, having a peaceful conversation about politics, riots, race – every “no no” in the Conversations With Strangers Handbook. We covered them all. And we did it peacefully, amiably, with smiles and laughs.

After some time, Femi smiled his 1,000-watt smile and asked for a picture with us — evidence that people with different opinions, backgrounds and skin colors can talk about real things. Things they disagree on. And come away better for it.

And that was fine with everyone involved. Because people like different things, and we had a great conversation about our varying preferences.

Imagine seeing that conversation on Twitter.

We talked about Covid-19, George Floyd, the riots. Femi said he doesn’t really get flipping cars, throwing rocks through windows, burning things. We agreed on that front.

“But people,” he said, “are being heard.”

I heard Femi. So did Delaney. We talked about our conversation with him the whole walk down the mountain, which was another seven or so miles to our campground.

That half an hour of talking with Femi, someone of a different viewpoint, with an open mind, is, in my mind, how change is made.

Imagine if, instead of throwing bricks, people started conversations. If, instead of screaming from one political pole to the next on social media, we quieted down. Listened. If, instead of looting stores for their goods, we probed the minds of those we don’t necessarily agree with. Maybe we’d come away with something more useful and lasting than a stolen pair of Nikes.

How much better would we be?

Conservatives and liberals, blacks and whites, men and women, have all agreed (I have yet to read a disagreement, anyway) that Floyd’s manner of death was outrageous. A unified, peaceful narrative could have taken shape.

“You might not like my guy,” the conversation could have gone, “and I might not like your guy, but we agree that this was wrong.”

That conversation never got the chance.

A sort of guerilla warfare has instead hijacked the narrative. Looting, fires, flipping cars, violence. I don’t really know what this accomplishes (I also don’t know what is accomplished by similarly thuggish and despicable behavior in cities after the local team wins a Super Bowl or World Series or Stanley Cup).   

Maybe the reasoning is that protests just aren’t enough. It was, after all, Martin Luther King Jr. who said that “riots are the voice of the unheard.”

But the biggest voices throughout history, the ones who continue to be heard, aren’t the violent types. King is foremost among the peaceful men and women who enacted change in this country. We know about Rosa Parks taking a seat in 1955. We still see images of John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising a fist in 1968. Colin Kaepernick is a household name because he took a knee in 2016.

These acts were quiet as a church mouse and yet loud and strong as a thunder clap. Agree or not with what they stood – or sat or kneeled – for and how they went about it, it is undeniable that they were peaceful, lawful, and their messages are still being discussed today.  

Maybe that is the issue, though: That the messages are still being discussed. That racism is still here. I wouldn’t deny that, nor can I, a white, Christian, 29-year-old male from a farmtown outside of Baltimore, empathize with or relate to anyone who deals with racism on a regular basis. I won’t pretend to. I’ve never felt the stings of racism, other than the occasional jab at my non-existent vertical at AAU basketball tournaments, which is just truthful and good humor to me. What I can say is that breaking windows doesn’t fight racism. Flipping cop cars doesn’t fight racism. Lighting things on fire doesn’t fight racism.

A conversation does. An exchange of ideas. A smile. A picture. A shaking of hands. A meeting so impactful and delightful that Delaney and I have talked about it every day since.

That’s how change is made.

If there is a viral quote being used on social media, I much prefer one from Ghandi than King Jr.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Maybe start that world with a simple conversation.