Wireless Communication in the Wilderness

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Outside Magazine March 2004

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Can You Hear Me Now? (Cont.)

IN THE MORNING, as I fetch water from the river, I hear Len start talking. Surprised, I glance up and see he's holding the phone to his ear. Until now, I haven't been able to measure the quiet. His words give the silence perspective, and I realize that without even thinking about it, we've lowered our voices.

As I reach the bug tent, he powers off the phone and gives me a weather report from Jackson Hole (sunny and warm). He tells me that Anne, his wife, wasn't home, so he called Lee, his sister, who will tell the family that we're alive and well, and would I like to call my girlfriend? He extends the phone under the lower edge of the bug net. For a moment I'm transported back to my childhood—an older boy is offering me a cigarette.

"No, thanks," I say.

"She'd love to hear from you."

Len is a Quaker, but he could be a dutiful Catholic. The technology to stay in touch now exists, and he's using it: the good brother, the good husband, the good father. By comparison, my desire for solitude and detachment, even if only for two weeks, seems self-indulgent—no, worse: irresponsible. The logic of the sat phone is overwhelming and, to me, pernicious.

"Maybe when the trip's over," I tell him, feeling like a Luddite.

"Anytime you want," he says and puts the phone away.

Years ago, when I was fresh out of college and traveling in South America, exploring jungles and mountains, phones were often days away, and typically broken if I found one. I checked my mail only at three-month intervals. It was in the midst of this journey that my uncle Michael, who'd taught me so much about the outdoors, suddenly died. He was a marine engineer, a world traveler, and it was from him that I acquired some of my wanderlust. Coming into Santiago, Chile, I walked into the American embassy and found a string of telegrams and letters waiting for me—the shocking news of his heart attack; the family's tremendous grief (he was only in his forties and left my aunt and my two young cousins behind); and the pleas to get home for the funeral—all three months old.

It was a turning point in my life. I realized that one of the reasons my relatives had never taken any extended trips was the fear of not being home if such a tragedy struck. I had overcome that fear, as had my uncle. (He died tending one of his ships in Japan.) There was a cost, however, to this freedom: I had missed one of the elemental passages of any family—bidding communal farewell to one of its departed members. Had it been worth it?

I thought so. In that era, there was simply no other way to become intimate with the outdoors, a family that called to me more than my own. Now there is. We can have it both ways: be gone and be attached. As Len and I continue downriver, he checks his voice mail—in my mind, often; in his mind, occasionally—and, thankfully, it's always empty of bad news.

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