Weird, I got my meshtastic node in January and immediately saw 10 people in my area with devices and was able to talk to them.
Mind you, I think some wind messed with the antenna on our router, so it's been offline, and so I've not been able to connect with anybody recently. But up until then, I was totally able to, and when it's eventually fixed, I will be able to again.
That's just what happens when you're reliant on only one other device. When that device is gone or compromised, you're down until it's fixed. If I had connections to multiple devices, that wouldn't be such a problem.