It’s been a while since my last post, but I have a good excuse: I’ve been in the mountains without internet access.
Yep, no internet. I don’t just mean no wifi. I mean that even my phone wasn’t pulling down a signal strong enough for a data connection. I couldn’t even make a phone call. I was completely unplugged.
Not that long ago, the idea of spending weeks without the internet would have caused me to break out in hives. Back then, I was working a job that required me to be constantly connected. Even switching my phone to silent during a weekend yoga class would cause me to worry that I was missing something important.
When I first left that job and planned to travel in Africa, the idea of being without the internet constantly at my fingertips was both freeing and terrifying. We quickly discovered that acquiring internet on our phones in Southern and Eastern Africa wasn’t as difficult as we had anticipated, but it also was also a different experience. Rather than paying for an “all the data you can use” package, we purchased packets of data — and so we carefully watched where it went.
Over time, we learned to depend less and less on the internet for entertainment. When you’re on the road, the internet can be an invaluable tool: it can connect you to reviews left by other travelers, help you find your way if you’ve gotten lost, help you decode that funny word you’re seeing on the menu. You can keep in touch with friends and family back at home, or with new friends that you’ve met on the road. You can even download electronic copies of guidebooks — when we decided to tag Jordan and Israel onto the end of our travels in Africa, we just checked electronic copies of Middle East guidebooks out of our home library and downloaded them to our Kindles. But, because our supply of data was limited as mentioned above, we needed to ration it — and so we couldn’t be scrolling through Facebook every few seconds. We had to find other ways to entertain ourselves … like interacting with the strange new landscape around us.
After having broken myself of my need for constant connectivity while in Africa, I thought that an internet-free mountain retreat would be a piece of cake. I had a lot of writing that I wanted to get done and a stack of that I wanted to read, and we even brought a crossword puzzle book with us.
At first, it turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I kept attempting to force a connection, and, on the rare occasions when my phone got just enough of a signal to tease me, I would become obsessed with attempting to refresh my inbox.
But finally I gave up and accepted that I was taking a break from the internet. And you know what? It was great. I wrote, I read, I took long hikes. We filled the hummingbird feeder and the bird feeder and proceeded to spend literal hours watching the birds. If I had the internet, I probably would have been distracted reading about something that had happened somewhere else or viewing a post about cute animals someone had sent me, and I never would have noticed the little nuthatch that liked to land on the bird feeder and sort through the contents, looking specifically for sunflower seeds. I wouldn’t have seen the cute chipmunk that scuttled around the porch, stuffing the seeds the nuthatch discarded into his cheeks. I had no idea that I loved birdwatching so much.
Here’s my challenge for you: On your next vacation (or staycation, or just weekend), unplug. Even if you have access to the internet, pretend that you don’t. Take a walk, watch the wildlife, or just sit on the back porch and dig into some non-wired entertainment. Interrupt your internet usage and see how it feels. I’m betting that you’ll enjoy it.
Image credit: 1) Alpine lake author’s own; 2) No internet by Marcelo Graciolli; 3) Nuthatch by Mark Kent (my own nuthatch was too quick to be photographed)