A few weeks ago, I embarked into the wilderness, determined to forgo any form of Internet access or electronic communication. It was my original goal to forgo all forms of technology that may prove distracting to the much-needed soul searching I was determined to do. Sadly, I caved within two nights and ended up watching television in the evening. I found I cannot handle silence for any great length of time. For the most part, I was able to isolate myself from the other electric distractions that have made their way in to my life, and I was able to gain some valuable insight because of it.
The first few days without my phone were odd. I found myself patting my right pocket where I normally kept my trusty digital companion and felt the vibrations of several phantom text messages during my first day. I even bought a larger pocketknife to take up the space in my jeans where I knew my phone should be. I could not remember the last time I had cut myself off from all forms communication like this for an extended period of time. No one, excluding my family, knew how to reach me. At first, this was an eerie feeling.
As unsettling as it was, I was excited to be without it. I had broken free of the cycle of endless notifications and updates and texts constantly buzzing at me from my device. I only had myself to keep me entertained. There was no way for me to escape into another person’s life or different part of the world with several taps of the screen. With this freedom, I found myself living my life more actively. I wasn’t sitting around waiting for life to happen to me. I was making life happen.
I was not able to achieve everything I had planned in my article. My archery practice took a backseat as I realized, quite rapidly, the impracticality of shooting green arrows into a forest. I decided it was best to resume practice when I would not lose an arrow if I missed the target. Regardless, I was still able to fish as much as I planned. There was one particular night where we found a patch of weeds housing a few dozen large bluegill. Fighting those fish through the weeds was the most invigorating experience I had all summer. It revived some sort of primal energy that only comes from such a triumph in the wild.
In addition to my fishing, I was also able to explore parts of the forest that I had always wanted to see. One afternoon, my parents, my sister, and I rented two canoes and took them out onto a lake about a mile down the road from our cabin. I had seen this lake so many times in the last 20 years, but I had only ever seen it from the shore. I could not go another year without knowing what was out there. I discovered that it was much weedier than the lake we normally fished, possibly due to the fact that no motorboats have been on the lake in years. My sister and I paddled around the lake for a few hours. She took pictures, and I tried to fish. For a while, we just floated. I smoked my pipe, and she surprised me with how wise she has become. This would have made for a pleasant afternoon by itself, but we were able to experience a sight that few people have ever been lucky enough to witness.
As we paddled aimlessly, exploring this alien lake, my mom called to us, and pointed out an eagle overhead. My sister pulled out her camera, hoping to snap a few shots of the creature as it soared across the treetops. As I tilted my head toward the sky, I saw a second eagle emerge from the forest. The two birds circled each other above the forest, then broke away, only to soar toward each other once more. We soon realized that we were witnessing two eagles perfroming their mating rituals in the wild. During one pass, the eagles sunk low enough to the water that I could see the sharp orange points of their beaks and talons. Their heads were still brown, which indicated they were no more than 4 years old. The pair danced at each other through the sky with a passion that hinted at their intelligence, and I am among the lucky few to have ever beheld such a spectacle.
As I reflect back on that afternoon, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had I not gone off the grid. I probably would have been content to idly surf the web while I waited for the prime hour to fish, but I had not given myself that option. That was probably why I was so eager to explore the lake in the first place. I needed something to distract me from myself. I only had my life to focus on. My Twitter followers and Facebook friends were not there to draw my attention away from my life with mundane snapshots of theirs. For the first time in years, I was alone, and it terrified me. My time in the wilderness raised more questions than it answered. What was I trying to escape? Why did I need to escape? Who am I when there is nowhere to forget myself?
I don’t think I am alone in this cycle of social media escapism. It’s probably a larger problem than most of my generation realizes. All of these young people on the cusp of adulthood retreat into this digital realm we have created for ourselves because it’s more preferable to reality. We want our lives to be as happy and as perfect as the lives our peers project over the Internet, so we only broadcast the highlights of our lives across the web. We all fall prey to this phenomenon, and what’s left is a hollow world of contentment. We know so much about everyone around us, but we are afraid to know ourselves. I am afraid to know myself.
