[at-l] Cell phones VS Nature - An attempt to clarify - LONG

[athiker89 at yahoo.com (Tim Rich)]

Very well put by both you and Chainsaw.  Thanks.  Whether there's someone left at home that we care about, or care to put at ease, makes a big difference in this approach to disconnectedness.  Not something everyone experienced in their hikes.
 
Take Care,
 
Tim

Jim Bullard <jbullar1@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
Jim O has said that many thru-hikers become 'disconnected' from their 
ordinary lives and civilization to the point that it takes weeks, month or 
years to reintegrate. I do not dispute that.

FWIW I have experienced 'disconnection'. I did not find it to be a 
desirable state in the sense that I would pursue it as a goal of my hiking 
experience and have a hard time understanding why he thinks it is desirable 
in and of itself. I have pondered this and conclude that Jim O and I come 
from very different cultural backgrounds.

Jim O doesn't think I've experienced the depth of immersion in nature that 
a thru-hiker does. What he doesn't understand is that I lived it for much 
of my childhood. Without going into great detail I grew up in the kind of 
environment he would consider "third world". Surrounded by reforestation on 
3 sides of our property and farm fields on the 4th we could not see our 
nearest neighbors, walking a mile and half to a 1 room school with 5 other 
students (2 of whom were my brother & sister), drawing water from springs 
in pails, neighbors delivering firewood with a team of horses and a 
bobsled. I spent my youth wandering the woods and fields and a gulf that 
was behind our home. We had no car except on weekends when my father came 
home. Everywhere we wanted to go, we walked. The number of people I had 
daily contact with could be counted on my fingers. A few times each year we 
went to 'town', a city of about 20K.

At the age of 12 things changed. My little school closed, I had to go to a 
large central school with over a thousand students. You want disconnection? 
Try going from a school of 6 to a school of about 1500. I was 
"disconnected" big time or more accurately "unconnected" since I had never 
been connected in the first place to what most consider to be the ordinary 
civilized world. It took me another 10 years to become sufficiently 
"connected" to function reasonably well in the larger society and I still 
feel more comfortable walking in the woods, sitting by a stream or on a 
mountain top than where there are more than a dozen or so people. Believe 
it or not Jim, even a day trip in the mountains will take me back to the 
desirable parts of my young experience but I have no desire whatever to 
return to the sense of disconnection I felt when I was thrust into a 
society that I was unprepared to deal with. A return to that state of mind 
would certainly NOT be one of my goals in a thru-hike.

Given my lifelong struggle to *be* connected, not just to nature but to the 
larger world, I hope Jim O can comprehend why I do not understand his 
desire to achieve something I have worked so hard to escape although escape 
is the wrong word. I do not regret a moment of those early years but I wish 
that I had also had an opportunity to become "socialized" earlier when I 
might more easily have achieved a balance of the two. I don't believe one 
necessarily *must* become disconnected in order to experience the 
connection to nature. Given Jim's attraction to it I can only assume he 
does believe it necessary.

To bring it back to cell phones, I don't like phones much, whether attached 
to a wire or not, but I carry a cell phone sometimes when I hike. I do so 
for for my wife's benefit and whether or not Jim O cares to believe it, it 
does *NOT* affect my hike. And apparently Jim O who has quoted Chainsaw in 
support of his position missed the last part of that post which I will 
quote here:

>That said, I am also a married man with folk back home who have needs and
>different comfort levels. So, the cell travel deep in my pack and from
>time-to-time I will check it for a message left by my wife, should anything
>come up. To date, she has never called, when I was hiking. But she feels
>comforted by the thought that she could get a message to me.

My advice: If you feel that it would be an intrusion on your experience, 
leave the cell phone at home but be aware that the intrusion is a function 
of your mind, not the phone.


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