Oops–it struck again this morning, the sudden desire to destroy a stranger’s cell phone.
At the time, I was having a perfectly nice run near the river, enjoying the soft snowflakes as they sifted past white-barked sycamore trees. I felt relaxed and happy. And when I passed a woman gabbing on her phone, I felt the familiar urge to grab it out of her hand and toss it in the C&O canal.
Frankly, I hate seeing those things in the woods. Of course I, too, have occasionally carried one when I’m biking somewhere to meet someone, or when I’ve needed to catch up with a friend about evening plans. They can be darned convenient.
So why do I find them so annoying?
From an environmental standpoint, it really doesn’t matter where a cell phone gets used. It’s no less friendly in the woods than in the mall. And cell phone conversations make even less noise than a group of friends laughing and chatting on a trail.
But a cell phone has another effect. It breaks people’s focus on their surroundings. It drags them back into the manmade world. It enables them to be in the woods without fully seeing the beauty around them.
The woman this morning sounded formal, as if she were talking to a client or boss, doing business from the convenience of the muddy towpath. Her eyes were staring at the ground. She was physically present outside, but her mind was far, far away.
For a few minutes after that, mine was too.
We as a society are astonishingly disconnected from the natural world. We’ve paved and covered, erected steel and stacked cinderblocks until we no longer recognize the earth that gives us life. As a result, many people think of the environment as that place out there for the birds and the trees and those strange crunchy hippie folks in Birkenstocks.
But all of us live in and because of our environment–it’s the air we breathe, the soil from which we grow food, the water we drink. We depend on it for our very existence. For some of us, it’s a source of spiritual strength as well.
If we can’t fully unplug, even for an hour, we lose the ability to connect with nature, to relax, to really feel the wind on our faces, the snowflakes brushing our cheeks, and our lungs taking in the cold fresh air.
Without connectedness, we lose quality of life. We lose the wonder of the outside world, and the first-hand understanding our how our planet’s delicate systems work. We also lose respect for nature.
I fully believe that this loss of respect and understanding is the reason we’re clear cutting our forests, exploding our mountains, pouring chemicals in our rivers, filling our air with carbon dioxide and poisons. We need to connect to care, and we need to care to make the world a better place.
Call me starry-eyed for this. Call me out of touch. Call me what you will.
But if you call me on my cell phone when I’m out in the woods, please be ready to leave a message.
Donna,
You’ve captured this beautifully – what all of us feel. If they can have “no talking on the cell phone” signs on Amtrak, you’d think they’d have them on nature trails!
Your blog is lovely. Hope you’re enjoying the blogosphere!
Thanks so much, Lynn, for your kind words!
I like how you phrased it: “We need to connect to care.” I, too, feel like our connection to nature is endangered by our gadgets. I think about this a lot in terms of my young son’s relationship to nature—there is a lot of competition from electronic media. But this is true for adults, too.
I remember when laptops became popular a decade ago, and manufacturers were talking about how great it would be: We could do work at the beach! I think we may have forgotten why we wanted to go to the beach in the first place.
I agree. Beaches, mountains, trails – these are places to go to get a sense of the big picture, and what’s really important in life. Kudos to you for thinking of your son’s relationship to nature. My parents had me outside from the very beginning, and I credit them and that experience for my connection to nature today.