Installing React-native calendars breaks installation - reactjs

Question

I'm a bit puzzled why two different npm installs for a react-native calendar are breaking the solution. I am running react-native through expo, and it runs fine before installing the calendar.
But after installing either
react-native-general-calendars
or
react-native-calendars
I get this error in the console after running
expo start:
> [17:30:29] Starting project at --location--
[17:30:33] Error: React native is not installed. Please run `npm install` in your project directory.
[17:30:33] Couldn't start project. Please fix the errors and restart the project.
[17:30:33] Set EXPO_DEBUG=true in your env to view the stack trace.
I run npm install and get the following error:
> [17:33:34] Starting project at --location--
[17:33:40] --location--\node_modules\react-native\local-cli\server\checkNodeVersion.js:43
[17:33:40] );
[17:33:40] ^
[17:33:40] SyntaxError: Unexpected token )
[17:33:40] at createScript (vm.js:56:10)
[17:33:40] at Object.runInThisContext (vm.js:97:10)
[17:33:40] at Module._compile (module.js:542:28)
[17:33:40] at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:579:10)
[17:33:40] at Module.load (module.js:487:32)
[17:33:40] at tryModuleLoad (module.js:446:12)
[17:33:40] at Function.Module._load (module.js:438:3)
[17:33:40] at Module.require (module.js:497:17)
[17:33:40] at require (internal/module.js:20:19)
[17:33:40] at Object.<anonymous> (--location--\node_modules\react-native\local-cli\cli.js:17:1)
[17:33:40] Metro Bundler process exited with code 1
[17:33:40] Set EXPO_DEBUG=true in your env to view the stack trace.
Here is my package.json:
{
"name": "my-new-project",
"main": "node_modules/expo/AppEntry.js",
"private": true,
"scripts": {
"start": "expo start",
"android": "expo start --android",
"ios": "expo start --ios",
"eject": "expo eject",
"test": "node ./node_modules/jest/bin/jest.js --watchAll"
},
"jest": {
"preset": "jest-expo"
},
"dependencies": {
"#expo/samples": "2.1.1",
"expo": "^29.0.0",
"react": "^16.4.2",
"react-native": "^0.56.0",
"react-native-general-calendars": "^1.7.2",
"react-navigation": "^2.9.3"
},
"devDependencies": {
"jest-expo": "^29.0.0"
}
}
When I uninstall the calendar I still get the error now. Not sure how to get expo to stop throwing the error. Anyone know how to fix this?