[at-l] Cell phone connection availability

[shane@theplacewithnoname.com (Shane Steinkamp)]

Delete at will if disinterested.

Before I go into this, I would just like to thank R&R for his clearly
written, well thought out post.

> You can't equate ALL technology or gear used on the AT as this poster
> attempts to do. If you take this posters logic and stretch it it would
> include all forms of camping assistance under its broad approval.

Agreed, but all camping assistance IS a kind of crutch.  Every piece of your
camping gear acts to separate you from the wilderness.  Bugs are a part of
the outdoor experience, but we all use repellents to make ourselves more
comfortable.  To truly experience wilderness in it's truest form, you have
to wander naked in the back country for a few days.  I highly recommend it -
just not all the time.

> They actually help the wilderness experience by
> facilitating longer visits out into the backcountry without
> detracting from the surroundings.

A cell phone is a tool that, under certain circumstances, would allow longer
visits out to the back country.

> I ask the poster to go into the woods
> for a week
> *without* silnylon, a sleeping bag, stove and others, but with a
> cell phone,
> and then go without the phone and take the equipment, if he wants to
> understand my meaning.

I have done so - Twice - not including vision quests.  Once by accident, and
the second time as an experiment, spending eight days and nights in the
wilderness without any gear at all - not even the cell phone.  Both times
were in places where a cell phone would not work anyway.  I have detected no
appreciable difference from my experiece of nature either with or without a
cell phone - but I did notice an appreciable difference when not carrying a
back pack.  A pack, with all it's accoutrements and 'necessities' of life
are reminders of civilization.  A cell phone is a magic box that lets me
talk to someone I love who cannot be with me.  By my standard, a pack and
gear are less desirable barriers to my wilderness experience - though often
a necessary barrier.  I can turn off my cell phone as easily as I can walk
away from my pack, as neither does anything to enhance my wilderness
experience even if they facilitate it.

>      How does that affect me when I'm not even there to witness
> it? Well, the
> AT is more than just a person's experience when they are on the
> Trail. It's
> also a public image that needs to be defended against all that tries to
> change it.

Trails are, IMHO, living things.  Living things that do not adapt and evolve
often die out.

> I guarantee you that the image of cell phones being OK
> on the AT
> will lead to the image of other things eventually becoming OK
> too.

There may be some truth to that, but who shall decide where the line is
drawn?

> The AT is a danged *Project*! that exists
> as a social entity designed to protect nature in a vanishing
> eastern mountain
> corridor. It's front or cutting edge is not deciding what makes its users
> happy, instead, it's a battle against intrusion into unbroken
> nature by man
> and his civilization, technology, urban mentality, and wilderness
> destruction.

> The cause should remain unchanged. If you look at
> urban man, the very logic that many here use to justify a cell phone's
> presence on the AT is *exactly* what the AT was designed to counter.
> All of the worst representations of nature-destroying technology and
> conveniences are *why* the AT was formed to preserve a wild place to
> counter their negative effects.

There have been many such experiments that don't always turn out to be the
panacea first imagined.  The Nacktkultur movement is a good example.  Any
such program must take into account not only the natural element, and not
only the human element - but also the element of humanity.  The trail is a
wild place - but it is a wild place specifically designed for use by humans.
For some of us our humanity desires contact with people we love who are far
away from us.  This was not always possible, but now the magicians allow us
to do so sometimes.  Calling my loved ones from a wild place does not have a
negative effect on me.  If I do so out of the sight and knowledge of others,
there should be no negative effect on them either.

> Electricity destroys the night sky...
> Communications have allowed the percentage of square
> footage of earth occupation by the average person to expand
> exponentially as has most other technology.
> Cars and highways have allowed people to reach
> much further out into the hinterlands for second homes and homes
> further from work. All these cut into remaining forest lands.

Yet you use these servants of technology.  What do you propose as the
solution?

>     What makes wilderness wilderness is the fact that you can't easily
> involve modern conveniences in its access.  What you won't
> see these posters mention is the written intention by the Trail's creators
> that the AT
> be a place where technology be excluded for the sake of
> preserving a sense of
> wilderness and how they can participate in this. -

>     Some posts seem to be written to make people feel good without first
> referencing a discerning look at the Trail's definitions and
> purpose. (You'll
> find those at ATC, not TP or even AT-L)...

Being ignorant of these definitions, I attempted to educate myself by
reading Mr. Mackaye's article available on the ATC.
(http://www.appalachiantrail.org/about/pdfs/MacKaye.pdf)  Mr. Mackaye does
not eschew modern conveniences, but rather modern stresses of urban life.  I
found it interesting that his chief concern is NOT for the wilderness - or
the concept of wilderness - but for PEOPLE.

> Especially today when the
> Trail faces its worst threats to its wild character. You have to ask
> yourself, "does my Trail behavior assist or defeat the purpose of
> keeping the AT a remote, disconnected and wild place?"

Professional explorers, such as Michael Fay who recently walked through an
isolated part of Africa - which he called "the last wild place on Earth.",
carry communications equiptment of several kinds.  Fay even had email.  If
you asked him if his ability to communicate with the outside world stole
from his sense of being in a wilderness, I do not think he would reply in
the affirmative.

I think that the largest threat to wilderness and the sense of wilderness is
the quantity of people in any given space.  If 600 of us fly out in an
airplane and land in the middle of a desert, we are all in the wilderness,
but our sense of wilderness is destroyed by our social situation.  In that
sense trails, being attractors of people have the property of wilderness
destruction.  I would not, however, prefer to be without trails - or without
people at times.

> "Will that sense of wildness
> become more and more precious as man continues to do what the Trail was
> created to counter?"

Yes.

Shane