“Primitive, Unconfined Recreation”
When KALW’s Marissa Ortega-Welch hit the Pacific Crest Trail, she used her preferred method of navigation: an old-fashioned trail map. But along the way, she met a couple who only used phones to guide them, a Search and Rescue team that welcomes the power of GPS, and a woman who has been told her adaptive wheelchair isn't allowed in official wilderness areas (not actually true).
So… does technology help people access wilderness? Or does it get in the way?
This week’s episode comes to us from “How Wild” produced by our friends at KALW Public Media. In this seven-part series, host Marissa Ortega-Welch charts the complex meaning of “wilderness” in the United States and how it’s changing. Marissa criss-crosses the country to speak with hikers, land managers, scientists and Indigenous leaders – people who spend every day grappling with how ideas about wilderness play out in the hundreds of designated wilderness areas across the U.S.
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LINKS
Check out more episodes of “How Wild” here.
CREDITS
How Wild is created and executive produced by Marissa Ortega-Welch.
Edited by Lisa Morehouse. Additional editing and sound design by Gabe Grabin.
Life coaching by Shereen Adel. Fact-checking by Mark Armao.
How Wild is produced in partnership with KALW Public Media, distributed by NPR and made possible with support from California Humanities, a partner of the NEH.
Host: Nate Hegyi
Executive producer: Taylor Quimby
Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Kate Dario and Marina Henke.
Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio
If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Nate Hegyi: Hey this is O/I, I’m Nate Hegyi – something wild happened to me recently. I was on a reporting trip, driving down the Oregon coast to California… when Verizon had a massive outage.
My smart phone stopped working. No email. No texts. No google maps. I was thrust back into a time when we traveled without cell service.
And honestly… It was exhilarating. I navigated with a paper map that I found at a visitor center… listened to local public radio… ate a sandwich on the beach and watched the seagulls… not the New York Times app on my phone.
It was a reminder about how reliant we are these days on tech.
We did a whole episode touching on this a few weeks ago… all about GPS.
But what about all that tech we rely on when we are off the beaten path. In the wilderness? That’s what our friends over at KALW explore in their new podcast How Wild.
It pokes and prods all the strange contradictions of big ‘W’ Wilderness – areas of the country that were designated by the federal government to be primitive, undeveloped, and untrammeled… but are often anything but.
And just a side note… we love this podcast. It’s got great tape, great writing, fun energy. If Outside/In had a funky twin sister… How Wild would be it.
Enjoy.
MUSIC
One of my favorite parts of any trip in the wilderness is when I get up onto a mountain pass and I can see the view in both directions.
Sound of unzipping pack, unfolding map.
HOLLY: Here’s Mather Pass.
When I’m backpacking with my friend Holly this is the moment that we get out the map.
MARISSA: I think we can totally see exactly where we came from. And beyond! Cuz you can see the mountains beyond Pinchot Pass.
HOLLY: Oh Yeah
We just hiked up to a mountain pass on the John Muir Trail in California’s Sierra Nevada.
MARISSA: Most importantly, we need to talk about where is Arrow Peak. I see it.
HOLLY: Oh my god we can’t see Arrow Peak.
Usually we just bicker…
MARISSA: What is that bump right there on the other side of Ruskin?
HOLLY: That lumpy thing? That is not Arrow Peak. Did you see how arrow-y Arrow Peak was?
We use topographic maps to plan out our day – figure out where the next creek will be so we can get water, figure out how big of a climb we’ll have up a mountain, where we’re most likely to find a flat area to camp.
But about five or ten years ago we started noticing that we were becoming a rare breed: people who still hike with maps. ‘Cuz everyone was using their phones.
We were hiking a section of the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington and we asked a hiker heading in the opposite direction where the next creek was. Instead of just telling us from memory, she whipped out her phone and opened an app.
Technology is changing my experience of wilderness. And it’s not just phones. My backpacking trips now begin by booking a permit online. Then I obsessively research the trips on the internet: read trip reports that are updated daily, watch people’s vlogs, ask questions in Facebook hiking groups.
The Wilderness Act says that wilderness areas are supposed to be places for “primitive and unconfined recreation.”
But what does that even mean anymore?
Do people want to “unplug” in wilderness?
Even if I want to…can I?
Podcast Intro starts
This is How Wild….a podcast about wilderness, how it’s changing, and what that says about us as humans.
Episode Five: Primitive and Unconfined Recreation
KEVIN MANN: Alright we’re going to go ahead and get on the trail. We’ll unplug everything and we’ll be ready to go in like 5 minutes
MARISSA: OK wait can I record the sound of you unplugging things?
KEVIN: (laughs) the sound of unplugging.
The guy you hear humoring me is Kevin Mann. I meet him at a rustic resort just outside Mammoth, California. This is a popular rest stop for hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail. There’s showers, a restaurant, and maybe most crucially - a power outlet.
KEVIN: You just have a rat’s nest of wires, everybody charging their stuff.
Kevin’s charging his phone, his inReach - which is a satellite communicator, and a power bank…
He unplugs
Sound of unplugging phone
KEVIN: Here it comes…
and we hit the trail.
KEVIN: I love hiking…
Kevin’s in his 60s and from the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s retired from a career at IBM. The year before I met him, he hiked the entire Pacific Crest Trail or “PCT” - from San Diego County to the Canadian border. This year, he’s hiking shorter sections.
KEVIN: That's our bridge.
Today he and his hiking partner, Lori, are heading north from Mammoth toward Yosemite.
KEVIN: OK here we are at a trail crossing. So I’m going to go ahead and open up our app. And we need to go to the right.
The app on Kevin’s phone has all two thousand plus miles of the Pacific Crest trail – and way points for where to get water and where to camp.
MARISSA: So this is like Google Maps for hiking. There’s your trail instead of the road...But this is a little symbol almost like a dropped pin on a Google map.
KEVIN: It’s exactly that.. and then when I click on it, I can open up a detailed description of that spot.
KEVIN: So for example: In 4.2 miles the middle fork of the San Joaquin River, there’s a campsite there. At a big river. Where the trail meets a big river there’s almost always a campsite.
Without these apps, you’d just hike to where the trail meets the river and hope there was a place to camp. And if there wasn’t, you’d look for somewhere else to sleep. But with these apps, you can figure out exactly how far away the next campsite is. You can even read comments about it from other hikers.
KEVIN: Latest one we would say a little more than two weeks ago: fire pit, log seating, river to fall asleep to.
KEVIN: These are just like reviews like you’d see on Yelp.
This is backpacking in the age of smartphones.
You ready for the list of technology that people like Kevin are using?
[Set to music]
KEVIN: Your smartphone, you could have some fancy other camera,
your Go Pro. You have to have a power bank for your electronics.
You have to have a charger for your power bank and your electronics for when you're in town.
If you have texting that you need to do … You have to have an inReach.
or satellite communicator.
And a fair number of people are carrying solar chargers as well.
And on the smartphone itself - there’s a built-in flashlight and compass. And then there’s all these apps you can download, that have not just maps but all this irresistible information that’s updated daily by hikers.
KEVIN: Like how much snow is there on that pass? Is that Creek or river still running? Is there a log down that you can cross on? Or are you going to have to take your shoes off and wade through it? All that information is on the apps and that’s not on maps.
MARISSA: But I mean, so this is the thing I’m curious about as a backpacker myself, what I would do when I got to a large creek - because I don’t use these apps - I would probably scout one way, scout another. So I guess my question is: Couldn't you just look around?
KEVIN: Well, it'll take you 15 seconds to look at the app. And tell you whether you should go upstream or downstream.
OK I obviously personally relish the chance to dis-connect from my phone while I’m in the wilderness. But as these apps make navigating easier. It feels like I’m swimming against the current. Or what would be the right metaphor…hiking up a scree field?
And what I’ve been trying to figure out is…how is a smartphone different from anything else I bring with me on the trail? A headlamp to see in the dark? A knife to slice cheese or cut rope?
Maybe it’s because… if you lose your knife, you can improvise. Find a sharp rock, cut something with your teeth.
If you lose your phone, you don’t just lose your tool. Because it’s telling you where you are...which way to go…. how to safely cross a creek. It kind of thinks for you. That’s why we call them smart phones, right?
MARISSA: Do you have a paper map with you?
KEVIN: No I don’t have any paper maps at all (laughs) No I don’t.
MARISSA: What happens if your phone breaks?!
KEVIN: My hiking partner also has a phone! (laughs)
You could see phones, and satellite devices, as being antithetical to the Wilderness Act itself.
DIANA PIETRASANTA: We had this conversation 25 years ago, 30 years ago, in the Forest Service, when cell phones first came into existence.
This is Diana PietraSanta. At the time, she was the Public Services Staff Officer for the Inyo National Forest, which the Pacific Crest Trail runs through.
DIANA: And it was literally: Is it okay to even have a cell phone in wilderness? That discussion is long gone. Now it's how to manage it.
I visit Diana at her Forest Service office. With every new technology that people bring on these trails, people like her have had to consider them in relation to the Wilderness Act.
The Act says wilderness areas must have opportunities for “primitive and unconfined” recreation. It also spells out what’s prohibited in wilderness… except for some exceptions. No motor vehicles, no landing of aircraft, no motorized equipment or other forms of mechanical transport.
When the law was written, it had cars and chainsaws in mind. Lots of new technology has developed since then. Mountain bikes, E- bikes!, hang gliders, drones.
Some of this stuff is straight-forward: you can’t take a bike in wilderness, ‘cuz it’s a form of mechanical transport. You can’t land a drone in wilderness, cuz it’s a form of aircraft. But Diana can’t tell you not to use earbuds to listen to a podcast while you hike…
DIANA: No, that's personal choice.
(Actually if someone listens to this podcast while in the wilderness, can you please let me know?!)
Is listening to a podcast while hiking a form of “primitive” recreation?
DIANA: I was up on the PCT just a couple of weekends ago, and everybody's looking at their phone. When everybody's walking along with their head down, and their phones in an application, which is basically telling them what they should experience, it turns out to be, to me, a pretty scripted itinerary and a pretty scripted experience.
Phones and the internet are changing how people hike. Honestly, I could do an entire season of stories just on tech and wilderness. Because of the internet, more people are finding out about lesser-visited trails. They’re all following the same routes. And these apps like the one Kevin uses are concentrating people in the same places. If an app lists a good place to camp along the Pacific Crest Trail, everyone shows up there. And people connect more with each other - either beforehand over social media or in person at these camp spots and end up traveling together in larger groups.
DIANA: So the idea of meeting and having - what's the equivalent of almost like an event? In the wilderness is very contrary to most folks' idea of wilderness or how it’s being managed by the land management agencies.
This is all really tricky. In or out of wilderness, I think we can all relate to the feeling of the internet blowing up our secret spot - whether that’s your favorite trail or a local bar. It can feel hard if you’ve been going to a place for a long time and now you suddenly see more people there. But we have to be careful not to gatekeep.
Diana says, the internet and these smartphone apps in particular are actually lowering the barriers to entry and helping more people get outdoors -- which is a good thing.
DIANA: I think some people do feel more secure in an unfamiliar place or unfamiliar terrain about their skill level and it gives them some confidence maybe to go do something they wouldn't otherwise do.
But smartphones can also create false expectations…
DIANA: And I think that there is a propensity in modern society that you have every single piece of information. But quite a few people have an expectation that everything's just going to go perfectly if they have enough information, and somebody else tells them what to do. And that's just not how nature works.
DIANA: In reality, it's it's actually pretty good experience to try to get up something and figure out: you can't do it. I think it's an experience that should not be missed (laughs)
MUSIC
JOHN PELICHOWSKI: GOOD MORNING, GO AHEAD.
Sound of radio noise
HELICOPTER ON RADIO: We did a recon. I think we found him.
JOHN: Copy all. I’ll be in the west side of the meadow. Should be suitable for landing site.
HELICOPTER ON RADIO: OK we’ll be down there soon
JOHN: Copy all.
About sixty trail miles to the north, the Mono County Search and Rescue team is preparing to rescue an injured hiker. A California Highway Patrol helicopter flies in to assist and a team of volunteers heads out on foot.
JOHN: Everybody’s good, We did a gear check? We’re ready to roll?
LUKE: Alright, let’s do it. Rock and roll
GUY (slight off mic): So if we do lose comm you can text us.
JOHN: There’s no service, you know that.
LUKE: So there’s no cell service, so you’ll have to text the other inReach.
When there’s an emergency in the wilderness, Mono County Sergeant John Pelichowski organizes this team to respond.
JOHN: Last night at about 10:30 I got a phone call from a lady in the Fresno area about her son being injured in the area of Peeler Lake.
Just over the northern border of Yosemite National Park.
JOHN: The interesting thing about it was the way it was reported. So he’s hiking up here alone and he somehow ended up injured , I believe it’s a lower leg injury.
JOHN: And this particular gentleman, injured, had no device, no cell phone, no InReach, no anything.
An InReach. The device that allows you to send texts using satellites. So even in places where you don’t have cell service.
JOHN: Some hikers came across him with an inReach device.
They were able to text their friend, who in turn got a hold of the guy’s mom.
JOHN: She in turn called us.
Because so many people now hike with their smartphones and these satellite devices, people can get a hold of John and tell him exactly where the injured person is.
JOHN: So that kind of takes the search out of search and rescue. For us, that's awesome.
John can learn what happened and how his team should respond. Do they need to bring a stretcher to carry this person out? Do they need to come immediately – even if it’s in the dark? Or they can wait until morning? Phones and satellite devices connect him directly with the hiker to get all this info.
JOHN: When they work, they work phenomenally. But if you have somebody that over relies on their cell phone, then it can be very detrimental.
Sometimes people get in over their heads… or they just think they’re in over their heads.
JOHN: We quite frequently get the ‘I'm tired phone’ call, or ‘I didn't realize how far this was’ phone call.
MARISSA: Wow, really, though, they'll call and just say I'm tired?
JOHN: Yeah, they'll they'll call and say that ‘I'm tired’, or ‘it's getting dark.’ Or ‘I'm afraid of the bears.’ And yeah, Hey, can you come get us? Do you have an emergency? No, then no, you can walk out the same way you walked in, you know. It's a delicate phone call.
This isn’t just about smartphones and satellite devices. Media itself is allowing new people to find out about places in wilderness. John says - you may never have backpacked before but if you see someone’s posts about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, it could give you an idea.
JOHN: You know, I'll just go to REI or whatever store it is, and buy this hiking gear and hike to PCT and not understanding that the Pacific Crest Trail is several thousand miles through extremely rugged terrain on both ends.
John also thinks there’s a way that smartphones have sort of changed how we even think about what constitutes an emergency.
JOHN: I think people have grown accustomed to being connected to one another. And it's almost a security blanket. I mean, when you're in daily life, right urban life, whatever you want to call it. And you always have WiFi or cell signal. And everybody you know, everything you need it's all at your fingertips. And then when you get out into the great wide world, the outdoors, the wilderness, and you look down at your phone and realize you do not have a cell connection… I think it causes a little bit of panic.
I have to say…I feel this myself, as someone who has been backpacking in wilderness since before smartphones. I used to disconnect for ten days without thinking about it. Now that feels way harder to do. I’m just used to being in touch more with my loved ones…and maybe less comfortable with the idea of help being so far away?
HELICOPTER ON RADIO: H40
JOHN: Go ahead.
HELICOPTER ON RADIO: We got him. We’ll be there in a couple minutes.
For this hiker today – who didn’t have a smart phone or satellite device – finding someone who did possibly saved him days of being stuck in the backcountry with an injury.
Sound of Helicopter
The helicopter airlifts him to a meadow near the road. Paramedics assess his injury. This is hard for me to watch. The hiker’s fine, but he’s definitely shaken up.
DAN: I’ve hiked 1,500 miles in the High Sierra. I’ve climbed 15 peaks.
(Emotion grows in Dan’s voice)
DAN: I’ve never had anything like this happen.
ANDREA: Hey that’s why we call them accidents. Things happen.
JOHN: I’ll tell ya, I’m glad those guys came across ya. I’m glad those hikers were able to get some information out.
From there, the paramedics take him in an ambulance to the nearest hospital. He’s lucky.
JOHN: You can have all the cell phone battery in the world, and a cell phone connection, and it could be in the middle of a nasty spring storm. And you can call me, but we might not be able to get there, Mother Nature is still in charge. So it's still wilderness. It very much is.
Phones aren’t the only technology that’s changed since the Wilderness Act was written. That’s after a very quick break.
---- AD BREAK ---
FRIEND: Can I put your chair in for you?
QUINN BRETT: Yes please sir. Thank you.
OK I want to take a break from the Pacific Crest Trail to talk about a completely different technology…
QUINN: OK Water, car key, jacket.
I’m up in Estes Park, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado about to go on a mountain bike ride with Quinn Brett and her friend, Nick…
QUINN: ....Ripping like doing tabletops and stuff which is sketchy
FRIEND: Really?
QUINN: Oh yeah
FRIEND: Do you get air?
QUINN: I have and I’m like why am I doing that?
Quinn is a former climbing ranger in a National Park and she now consults land managers on how to make wilderness more accessible for people with disabilities.
MARISSA: Is this a bike you’d take into Wilderness?
QUINN: This is yeah I would say this is the one I mainly use just cuz can navigate good terrain.
Quinn’s bike looks like a big tricycle in reverse.
QUINN: Yeah so it’s got 2 wheels in the front. I have 27 and a half inch mountain bike wheels.
And instead of a bike seat, there’s more like a saddle for her to lean over in a kneeling position. Because of a rock climbing injury, Quinn doesn’t have use of her legs so she uses her arms to pedal.
QUINN: The hand cranks are below that so I’m one arm at a time pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling.
She has hand-powered herself on adaptive bikes like this one all over the outdoors - like from one rim of the Grand Canyon down and up to the other rim, and then all the way back.
QUINN: I was the first person to hand cycle the tour divide, which is, biking from Banff, Canada, all the way down to the New Mexico Mexico border.
Quinn works at the intersection of the Wilderness Act with another law: the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Wilderness Act bans any form of mechanical transport in wilderness - so like no bikes - but the Americans with Disabilities Act says that people with mobility disabilities like Quinn are allowed to use wheelchairs in wilderness to get around.
QUINN: Because that's the only way for me for instance, as a person who uses a wheelchair, that's the only way I'm getting around. I have to use wheels. I'm not going to army-drag myself along the trail.
But the definition of the word “wheelchair” has changed a lot, even in just the last few decades since the Disabilities Act was passed.
QUINN: There is a lot of New Age technology out there and so it does not look like grandma's wheelchair. It looks very foreign. It does often look like a bicycle.
Like the one she’s using today. Which sometimes other hikers see and think that Quinn is breaking the laws of wilderness by being on what looks like a bike.
QUINN: Yes, I get chatted to all the time.
And she either has to tell them she’s allowed to be there by law.
QUINN: Or just let them know, well, it 's my legs don't work. So this is how I'm hiking today. And yeah, so it's a lot of education that I have to do on trail. And that's tiresome as a person with a disability, as we're always educating the community around us. Like the first three people I can be nice to by the 10th person that day, I'm like, okay, especially when they're not the nicest to me either.
Quinn says she even gets push back from land managers.
QUINN: So I have had a wilderness manager a while ago, maybe a couple of years ago, when I first started this work, say that what I was asking for was akin to drilling in Alaska.
QUINN: When you hear wilderness and you hear accessibility, I think the brain immediately jumps to, well, if anything's accessible, it's got to be paved and pavement doesn't belong in wilderness.
QUINN: And that's not at all what this work is doing.
A lot of her work is educating land managers about how slight tweaks can make a trail more usable.
Quinn uses her adaptive bike on all sorts of rugged trails that aren’t paved, like the one that we’re on today!
But certain barriers can get in the way - like if the trail is too narrow for her bike, or if it has steps. These are things that trail crews could easily consider when building new trails or updating old ones.
She’s also working to get more info about trails online. There’s already so much information online about trails but the info she needs, like how wide the trail is and if it has steps, is rarely shared. Quinn wants to see more of that information available, as well as signage at trailheads that indicate that the trail is accessible to wheelchair users.
QUINN: that iconic symbol, for instance, of Accessibility, the blue sign with the wheelchair on it to include some sort of icon like that on a trailhead, I think would be fantastic.
Or even better, an icon that resembles the type of wheelchair she uses in wilderness.
QUINN: Just like in the, a kneeling position icon of somebody on a hand cycle.
QUINN: Even if that was at all trailheads one, then I myself would know that I'm allowed there and two other people on trail will finally trigger off like, oh, that's what that means. I see the picture of the horse and I see the picture of the skier. Now I see the picture of the hand cyclist. Cool. That's what that means. You're allowed here. Now, I don't have to say something rude to you on trail.
Accessibility in wilderness is not just about the trail itself. It can start with getting the permit online, which often involves buying one through a timed system. A process that I find stressful!
QUINN: So if you have an intellectual disability or you're blind and have a screen reader, these things could be more difficult to navigate if you only have two minutes to purchase your thing and then enter your credit card number, that can be a barrier.
Some people have told Quinn that it’s dangerous for someone like her with a disability to recreate in wilderness. She says that’s ‘cuz her disability is a visible one.
QUINN: You can't see the guy with heart disease hiking up the trail to tell him, hey, you probably shouldn't be at altitude and you should be having more than Coke.
Quinn says usually people with disability are extra aware of their needs and extra prepared on the trail to deal with any situation that arises, ‘cuz they have to be.
QUINN: And I'm very aware of how to do my bike maintenance if I need it. Or how I need help.
Before her injury, Quinn says that was more rigid in her thinking about wilderness and who or what should be allowed in it.
QUINN: And now, as a person with a very visible physical disability and the same desire to recreate in the same way that I used to, I've realized how much work we haven't done to broaden the spectrum of who and what is allowed in wilderness, from people with disabilities to socio-economical to different like cultural, just expanding that all.
Talking to Quinn has got me thinking about the ways that technology can be both a benefit and a barrier to people accessing Wilderness. And how I have to be so careful about denouncing any technology out right.
It’s so easy for me to say something like smartphones are “ruining” the wilderness experience…
When there is so much positive and negative about technology, that varies from person to person, or situation to situation.
There’s also this sort of academic conversation around whether the division between humans and technology is a false dichotomy. Like technology is just anything humans have invented. So maybe it’s just an extension of ourselves?
NICHOLAS CARR: I mean, a trail is a technology. Boots are a technology. Raincoats, clothes, everything is a technology.
This is Nicholas Carr. He’s the author of multiple books about how technology and the internet changes us as humans.
NICHOLAS: Technologies are to a great extent what allow us to have these kind of experiences in nature.
Take the paper map! Which he says, was one of the earliest technologies.
NICHOLAS: Before the map came along, you know, you only had your senses to get around, so you paid very close attention to where you are and where you were going.
You had to notice where the sun was in the sky - which trees or mountains could be used as landmarks - so that you wouldn’t get lost.
Then when the map came along…
NICHOLAS: Instead of kind of depending on our senses to get around, you start, depending on this piece of paper. And as a result you don’t need to exercise your senses because you can just use a map.
And here I thought, Holly and mine’s using of a paper map connected us to the landscape more.
Nick says that all technology in some ways distances us from nature.
My boots protect my feet but I can no longer feel the ground…the map helps me figure out where to go…but I no longer need to use my senses as much.
The smartphone, though, changes my experience in an even more profound way than boots or a paper map. Because it’s not just showing me where I am. It’s telling me the most efficient route to get somewhere…giving me up to the minute information about conditions.
NICHOLAS: And as technologists and software writers like to say it, it removes the friction from the process. Friction of saying, oh my gosh, how do I get across the stream? Where do I have to go? Where should I, where should I set up my tent?
NICHOLAS: I think what happens when you become too reliant on the technology is you kind of lose sight of what really inspired you to get out there in the first place, which is to have this direct experience.
It’s funny because I think I go to the wilderness to have a nature experience?…but yeah, I’m very much reliant on technology to have as easy of a nature experience as possible. I research online the best route I can take to maximize beautiful views in the time that I have. I check the weather before I go…I don’t want to go backpacking if it’s raining. I try to reduce the friction.
NICHOLAS: And so nature or the wilderness becomes, in that case, a means to an end. It almost nature kind of becomes a tool that you're using for some other purpose.
The purpose of posting photos of the beautiful views I saw on Instagram. Or checking a particular hike off a list.
Holly and I joke about this all the time. We remind ourselves not to be “consumerists” of nature… to not get obsessed with how many miles we’ve hiked, how many mountain passes we’ve gone over. To try and focus instead of bending down and appreciating the tiny mushroom.
But what I’m not going to do is just wander off in the woods without a map in a rainstorm to have a direct nature experience. That’s just not necessarily how I want to spend a weekend.
NICHOLAS: There's always a trade off. Sometimes the friction, the kind of struggling with something, looking around very, very carefully, is what opens up nature to us.
Nick says that how we perceive the world can physically change us.
A team of neuroscientists studied the brains of veteran London taxi cab drivers, who had every city street memorized. And what the scientists found was, part of the cabbies’ hippocampus - the part of the brain responsible for navigation and memory - was considerably larger than normal.
Navigation and memory are tightly connected. Because a lot of navigation is just remembering stuff. The arrow-shaped mountain that you hiked by that had the good camp spot..… Or you know, the Taco Bell on the corner where you have to turn to get to your friend’s house.
So as we rely more on maps….and our phones for navigation.
NICHOLAS: There's a fear that in the long run, not only will we have less navigational sense, but it might even mean a more fragile memory.
NICHOLAS: We may come to discover that having at least some decent navigational sense is actually maybe important to feeling a deeper connection to where we live, to the place in which we live. And this is purely speculative but if you lose that which seems something deep in us as animals you might lose something quite satisfying and fulfilling about your life.
KEVIN: We're coming to the bridge.
MARISSA: Is that where the campsite is?
Back on the Pacific Crest Trail with Kevin, we’ve made it to the campsite by the river that he found on the app this morning. It’s a big flat area that could probably fit about six tents. Kevin pulls out his phone again.
KEVIN: So, this looks good.
After I first started reporting this story, I broke down and bought a satellite device. I carry it for emergencies. I have yet to use the apps Kevin uses, but it’s probably coming.
For me, I’ve seen the wilderness as a way to disconnect from technology. But technology is also a way to access wilderness.
How do we utilize technology to access the wilderness, without letting it get in the way of experiencing nature itself?
How do I continue to be present in wilderness - not distracted by my phone’s apps, an incoming text?
It’s hard to not feel like pretty soon the takeover is inevitable.
MARISSA: I would bet that anywhere I backpack, I'm probably gonna be able to make a phone call. Be able to make a phone call.
KEVIN: Be able to make a phone call… Well, you will, I think because low orbit satellites are not too far in our distant distance.
They’re already here. More low earth satellites are being launched into space, bringing Wifi and connectivity to places that never had it before. Legislators are directing National Parks to look into increasing their internet and cell service. And Apple announced that its most recent operating software will allow texting via satellite. All of this technology is developing so fast, honestly this episode is probably going to sound out of date very soon.
Wilderness is not going to be a place where I'm forced to unplug. It’s going to be like anywhere else. A place where I have to choose to unplug if that’s what I want.
KEVIN: Wow, yeah, that's not going to be great. I don’t know what to say about that. (Laughs) It's pretty hard to resist.
PODCAST OUTRO:
How Wild is created and executive produced by me, Marissa Ortega-Welch.
It’s edited by Lisa Morehouse
Additional editing and sound design by Gabe Grabin
Life coaching by Shereen Adel
Fact-checking by Mark Armao (r-mayo)
It’s produced in partnership with KALW Public Media and distributed by NPR.
And made possible with support from California Humanities, a partner of the NEH.
This podcast is produced in Oakland, California…on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ohlone.
Learn more about the Indigenous communities where you live at native-land.ca
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