At this very moment I am sitting next to a river that is about 50 ft wide and moving along at maybe 5 mph. It is very soothing yet I feel like an idiot typing on my laptop. I mean, I want and need to be working on this. I could be at a hotel, but instead I am here where it is beautiful and quiet and totally outdoors in the sun. Also, I can see about 50 ft to my left a huge RV no doubt with color TV, stereo, full kitchen and who knows what else. Still, their use of technology doesn't justify mine; I feel like I should just be writing in my spiral notebook.
I know that this is simply a clash of cultures going on in my brain, and soon enough, there will be laptops and wi-fi a-plenty in the wilderness. Not a good thing or a bad thing, just a thing to contemplate. More interesting here is the abrasion, the conflict, and the resolution.
Who the fuck cares if I am typing on my laptop! You can go screw if you think that's weird. Or, is that just the city in me talking? Obviously I care enough to notice, but I'm not changing my behavior. Maybe as an outsider I can be a teacher? No, I don't want to be Johnny Laptopseed and spread the technology all over the land. I just want to be left alone, which I am, so why am I even typing this?
Ever have an inch worm on your laptop?
2 comments:
There is something really satisfying about having your gadgets with you out in the wild, especially if you are hidden away in the middle of a beautiful nowhere. I've been bringing my laptop to the forests with me, and it almost feels like traveling with a friend, due to the relationship I've built up with it.
No inch worms, but i had some daddy long-legs spiders a few days ago.
I often struggle with this debate: how much convenience can we take with us before our sojourn in the wild becomes just another change of scenery upon which we overlay our unchanged lives? Where do we draw the line?
For me, it's about whether what I bring enhances my engagement or gets in the way. I tend to be a minimalist, but can appreciate that understanding what makes camping enjoyable for me goes a long way towards ensuring I'll do it more often. I've never brought a laptop, but I imagine it would be kind of neat to.
I was once at a large outdoor get-together in upstate NY, where the majority of the attendees were in IT. That's where I saw my first GPS: Here we were in this beautiful mountain spot, and people were standing around staring at these devices in their hands, reading coordinates. I finally said to one of them, "You know where we are? We're RIGHT HERE." They didn't get my point. (They also thought I was a party pooper for refusing to participate in the Mass Naked River Swimming, but that's another story.)
Typing on a laptop is just another form of writing, no different from Thoreau's scribbles in his book (and let's not forget that this back-to-nature icon was a mere mile down the road from the Alcott sisters). You really can't compare that to driving an RV into the woods.
Cut yourself some slack. After all, you're actually out there, and we're glad you can share it with us.
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