Getting away isn’t easy. And once you are away cutting ties with “home” is even more difficult. Once you spend enough time on the screen it feels like the screen is “normal” life when it is in fact the polar opposite. The screen isn’t real. It’s a screen. I see my body in photographs and it looks like a soft screen body and it bothers me to no extent.
“You have been in motion since we got here,” she says to me. “Can’t you relax?” That’s a tricky question. As the canyon narrows the cell signal narrows, then blinks then goes dark. Step one. The campsite is chosen. Step two. Rods are prepared, flies tied, fires are crafted. Inside the van live my journal, my book, but my brain can’t seem to go there. I must move. I feel like my brain and body are screen brain and body and I must kill off this artificial version of myself.
Something must change so I move. Up the ridge, scrambling on talus, then back to the river to fish the few remaining deep holes. The water is dropping and dropping fast. Trout will hold in the deeper pools but they are wary. Spooked. I know how they feel.
I can’t sit. I walk the river then the road then the ridge again. Binoculars, long lens, new Sony to make motion bits. Record, note, snap. Acquire things for later like a squirrel prepping for the subzero. A cache of memory. Is it okay to just sit and stare? Yes, but try to convince yourself of that when the day is typically about email, messages, and Google docs. Timelines, schedules, production, meetings, and call after call after call. An artificial shadow that may or may not exist outside of your mind.
Out here there is only here.
Comments 6
Hitting the nail on the Zoom call head here. Too much screen time for me too. Hard to flip it when it is what we do…but not who we are. Cast that reel, ride that gravel. Click.
Author
Mark,
It shows how powerful these tools are in taking over our world. It is a drug unlike any other. And truly hard to quit even when given the opportunity.
Hitting the emotions hard with this one Danno! I envy you being out there. You make me miss my hometown deep in the English countryside where people still ride horses in the street to get about and a trip to the local supermarket is quite the journey to say the least.
I was just wondering… have you ever thought about having some guest blogger / writers on shifter? Do you take submissions?
Author
Hey Kurt,
When we moved to Wyoming, part-time, in the mid-1970s, there were still horses tied up on Main Street. As for submissions. It’s not that I’m opposed to it but this site gets about 1% of my time and I just don’t have the bandwidth now.
Everywhere there is only here.
Author
Chuck,
That about sums it up.