We live in a time that our phones have become as vital as a supplemented organ. We post, pin, and tweet what we’d like to see in ourselves, rather than what we are. Unfortunately, we live in a generation where it’s easier to connect to someone through a computer screen than it is to connect with someone climbing down a beaten trail. There is a disconnect between nature and humanity that is only widening as this millennium grows.

Sure, we all “love” nature. We consider ourselves traveling souls and wanderlust lovers, but we claim this behind a cell phone screen. I begin to wonder how many of these wanderlust lovers are actually infatuated with turning off their phones and exploring the finite landscapes around them or merely infatuated with the self-proclaimed image.

There is a startling hypocrisy behind the “Flower Child” of this generation. The anxiety from maintaining an image of ourselves, of being “liked” or being “followed”, distracts us from actually being, well, liked. How can we fall in love with ourselves if the person we are is photo shopped and filtered? As a twenty-two-year-old, I fall into this category of maintaining a social media presence; It’s even part of my job. But much like balancing work and play, we need to balance time spent in a virtual world and in the real, breathing, moving, wonderful world in front of us. Because this world is temporary, and if we blink we just might miss it.

Remember to enjoy the parts of life that you can’t screenshot. Because those memories were the original screenshot.

Last weekend I experienced this unconnected dystopia. While hiking the Shenandoah valley, I felt the burn in my legs and the brisk air filtering through my lungs. My conversations were in real-time with legitimate meaning and motive. I felt more connected to myself and my traveling partner than I had ever felt through a social platform. We listened and laughed, the “can you hear me now” Verizon slogan replaced intimacy that can only be felt by someone breathing in your presence. These moments reaffirm my relationship to myself and the world around me because the purity we retrieve from nature is the innate beauty we find within ourselves.