Back From the Wilderness--Did I Miss Something?

And I do mean the wilderness. We were in the wilds of upper eastern Utah and western Wyoming--not the pretty part, but the part that has no trees for a hundred miles in any direction, no water, and a huge amount of dust.

I'm a Mormon, which means that around this time of year (today, specifically), we celebrate the migration of the pioneers on the overland trail from the Missouri River to the Salt Lake Valley (and points local) in 1847 (and every year after that until 1868). Sometimes, depending on your affiliation and your job within the church organization (nearly everyone in the church has some kind of job), you get a chance to go on a kind of re-enactment of the handcart companies of the 1850s, in companies of hundreds of (mostly) teenagers. That's what I was doing. Hauling a 500-pound cart around rutted tracks in the Wyoming bush.

No cell. No internet. No screen at all--I didn't even bring a watch.

We went 26.8 miles, more than a marathon, in a family of eleven (nine kids--which is only one more than my actual number), part of a company of five families in a wagon train of nine companies. We were lead wagon one day, and last wagon twice. Neither was great (but the lead is much better--the farther back you are, the more dust you eat). We lugged our personal items, clothing, water, some food, etc. in our cart, with six to eight pulling and pushing at a minimum, and sometimes everyone heaving on some part of the cart just to get it up the hill.

There was deep religious significance to the thing, but that's not what I want to talk about. For four days I had no phone, no tablet, no computer. Right now, sitting at this desk, I have three laptops, an iPad, and a Samsung phone within arm's reach, and a big flatscreen TV twenty feet away. I almost always have some sort of configuration like that. I have eleven email accounts, all the social media stuff, and Steemit (of course) going all the time. Last Wednesday I had that cut off entirely, at 6am. I turned all my devices off. I've not done that since...I don't know. I may never have done that.

People call me an addict. I can tell you right now that I know I am not one. How? Because I didn't miss the screens at all. I did not compulsively check my pants to see if I had my phone. I did not long to check Facebook and see how everyone was doing. I missed posting on Steemit more, probably, than anything else, but I honestly didn't think much about Steemit, either (except to wonder if STEEM was moving higher, and it nicely was, thank you). I didn't miss any of it even a tiny bit. I didn't even have a clock, and that also didn't bother me. I looked at the sun. If it was up, I was pulling a handcart. If it wasn't, I was sleeping. Pretty simple.

Unplugging was refreshing, sort of, but not in the "these devices are sucking the life out of me" kind of way. I like nature, birds, coyotes, prairie dogs, antelope (all of which we saw or heard), but I like contemplating currency exchange and upvoting, too. I don't feel like I "connected" with the real any more out there than I do here, though maybe that's a problem with me. All I know is that when I had to leave the devices behind, I did it, and I didn't think of them again. When I came back to them, I picked them up and started using them, because they could do things for me that I needed done. I wasn't relieved about it. If I have them, good, if I don't, also good.

That was encouraging to me. I had serious responsibilities, and I was able to discharge them without trouble, though they took all my concentration. Now I have different ones. And perhaps I am better able to block out the things that distract me than I was this time last week. I don't know. I am glad to be back. But being gone wasn't the worst thing, either. You all seem to have managed beautifully without me.

~Cristof