Hiking the other day on a
national forest trail, we passed a lone woman. Cell phone glued to
her ear, chattering away, she stomped by us without the usual trail
civilities of at least a smile. Engrossed in the world at her ear,
I doubt she even registered the beargrass blooming at her feet.
Since cell phones became required appendages for our
lives, what’s commonplace has changed. No one bats an eye now when
people prattle on seemingly to themselves while they walk down
sidewalks, wait for luggage in an airport terminal, push a cart
through a grocery store or drive a car. I own a cell phone, too.
I’m certainly no Luddite, but I don’t think they belong in the
backcountry.
Where does the buzz of a cell phone fit in?
The backcountry is a place where sounds are part of the experience.
Mule deer snort in the woods. Wind rustles aspen leaves. Cedar
waxwings gossip to each other in their trilling squeaks. Picas
scream warnings. Crickets drone. Waterfalls roar. On a drippy day,
raindrops tinkle on alpine lakes. Nature speaks.
Just as
a driver with cell phone pinned to ear forgets to signal when
turning, attention to nature diminishes when a private conversation
takes over. Eyes merely gloss over detail — the number of
needles on pine trees, miniature hairs on a mariposa lily —
as ears focus on the electronic drone. But the one yik-yakking
isn’t the only one to miss out; others nearby find their attention
snagged by fragments of a one-sided conversation.
I was
hiking recently with a group when two cell phones spoke from the
bowels of two backpacks in unison. We all stopped on the trail
while the two dealt with matters of great consequence, each
cradling phone to ear. While I didn’t mind the pause for breathing,
the hiatus wasn’t a normal rest stop, where we could check out the
season’s huckleberry picking by combing the bushes at our feet. We
couldn’t help eavesdropping.
Last fall, when we were
camping out in tents on a secluded beach, cell phones competed with
seagull squawks on a daily basis. While the users at least had
enough courtesy enough to walk away from camp to talk, the calls
gnawed at their ability to dive full-bore into the outdoor
experience. Out in nature, the pace of life slows, offering time to
consider life from a different perspective that’s free from work,
meetings, possessions and obligations. Continuing connection with
the outside world derails that letting go. In our attempts to do it
all — get into nature while maintaining control of our home
world — we lose sensory touch with a place that’s wild.
Thank goodness, there are still canyons in the Southwest
and glacier-gouged valleys tucked under peaks without cell towers.
But even these remote places are becoming sparse as national parks
allow wireless companies to invade. Since the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 opened up federal lands to cell towers, each land
management entity can grant or deny permits for wireless companies
to install intrusive communication spires. Lake Mead National
Recreation Area has three, for instance. Yellowstone National Park
has six.
Proponents argue that cell phones help people
with emergencies. No doubt, lives have been saved by someone
dialing 911 from a mountainside. Wireless companies and park
rangers alike point to cell phones aiding the safety of backcountry
travelers. So we gladly haul our phones in backpacks “in case of
emergency.” But these days, our definition of a crisis has
expanded, and we no longer know what the term “life-threatening,”
means. It can include those times when the fridge is out of milk or
Johnny wants to stay overnight at a friend’s house, or the stock
portfolio need adjustment. We’ve confused emergency with
convenience.
We can erect cell towers virtually anywhere,
but do we need to pincushion the earth with them? Some places
deserve to be left remote, where rescue is more than a phone call
away. And for those wilderness places with three bars of cell
service, maybe we should add electronic etiquette to our
backcountry credo. In addition to leaving only footprints and
taking only pictures: Let’s turn off the phones.
Becky Lomax is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). She
writes in northwest Montana, where a few trails get by without cell
phone service.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
