There’s been a surge in climbing and hiking in the past decade or so. It’s noticeable. Places where you never saw cars parked, now have a few. Places where there were five or ten, now have twenty or more. Some places like the AMC Highland Center on Route 302 in Crawford Notch are lined with more cars than I have time to count—and that’s on a random Tuesday in the summer. And while some places can feel overcrowded, like lookout points on the Kancamagus Highway on an autumn day, I can’t help but feel encouraged by the fact that more people are seeking the great outdoors. To see that people are seeking anything at all, beyond their modern conveniences, is heartening.
The last forty years of technological advances have felt like a flood. Like water from a fire hose that we are trying our best to drink from before it knocks our heads clean off. Looking back, it’s sort of crazy to think how far and how fast everything has moved. One day we turned on the television to discover MTV, and in a blink we have AI-driven technology telling us what recipes to make tonight for dinner. I remember the days when playing Pitfall on Atari felt like we were living in another dimension. Now you can throw on an Oculus and lose yourself in a world of virtual reality. Everywhere we go we are bombarded with Bluetooth, cellular data and Wi-Fi, and not only are we constantly connected to the world through our phones, but our houses are too, through a myriad of “smart devices.”
Breaking Free
Maybe that’s what’s driving more people to the mountains. The feeling that we need to escape. To reconnect with who we were before all of this technology. Before we started inventing all of this stuff “to help” us out. To get back to being mindful, soulful beings, untethered to the vibrating resonance of an unseen manipulator. To hit the brakes and reevaluate what we actually need before we convert the planet into an all-consuming AI control center. I know it gives me comfort to know there are still some places free of IT (double-entendre intended).
Because it sometimes feels like a quiet war, doesn’t it? As if computers, emails, smartphones and digital calendars are trying to control our every waking moment, and we need to raise up arms (or hiking feet) against them? Maybe that’s the big irony that’s coming. That all of this technology will force us to a breaking point, where we reclaim who we were again. That we learn how to balance an AI-driven world so we can go back and rediscover the natural one.
Ironies of Life
One of the cruelest ironies in life is that many of us figure out what we want out of life, far too late. The barrage of these last forty years has made answering the question, “what do I want out of life?” a whole lot more complicated. There’s been a lot to distract us. One of my goals with writing posts like this is to parse through all of the noise and chaos, and hopefully provide some shortcuts for thinking through it. To offer encouragement for some practices that have helped me navigate life.
And if it helps no one but me, I guess that’s good enough. Because it does help me. Each time I write, I get more clarity about what I’m doing and why. Each time I hike, I find my center again. But I hope hearing about these practices and these special places help you too, because exercises like writing, reading, and hiking aren’t one-off solutions to get you the peace you may be looking for. Only through constant immersion can we reclaim our true nature—get rooted in it—and be better able to balance what comes next. And we need that practice, because a whole lot more is coming.