My Side of the Mountain
What we need is less cyberspace connectivity and more time alone in the natural world.
Thinking about a comment I made a few days ago, that centralization of speech on social media makes it easier to control, I realized there is another, far greater centralization and psychological dependence that has been allowed to take root as a consequence of that centralization.
I’ve noted how I grew up with an extended family, but growing up in rural Mississippi, up in the hilly, forested areas of the northeastern part of the state provided the opportunity for isolation. I spent a lot of time roaming those rolling hills and creek bottoms alone as a kid. Looking back, it wasn’t because I didn’t have cousins or friends with whom to play, I enjoyed the solitary time.
Maybe that sounds weird in these days of kids having scheduled activities pretty much all the time, but growing up, my heroes were people like Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett (I had a coonskin cap). When I was eight, my favorite book was My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. It is a story of Sam Gribley, a 12-year-old New York boy, who leaves his family and runs away to his great-grandfather’s abandoned farm in the Catskills and sets up a home in a massive hollow tree with only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel and finds a way to survive on his own.
When I was in grade school, our school library had a series of American history books that covered the Founders, Revolutionary War heroes and famous figures all the way into the early 1800’s. I can’t remember the series title, but they had to have been written in the mid to late 50’s because by the time I got hold of them, they had been rebound in dull orange covers with simplistic illustrations on the front – but it didn’t matter because those were my late 60’s version of the internet. From Jefferson and Madison, Boone and Crockett, Lewis and Clark to Nathan Hale and Andrew Jackson, I read them all.
And the more I read, the more the independent spirit of those people grew in me.
I had one up on Sam Gribley, I already lived on a farm. From my dad and granddaddy, I learned how to make camp and make a fire, how to fish and hunt and how to read signs and track. We grew crops and raised chickens, hogs, and cattle, so I understood how to turn pretty much any living protein source into food.
When I was seven or eight, I got a little outdoorsman “kit” consisting of a hunting knife, a hatchet, a pocketknife, a file, and a whetstone, all the things a budding woodsman needed to get started and to keep his tools sharp. By the time I was ten, I had graduated to a double bit ax, was allowed to carry my .410 shotgun without adult supervision, and could camp by myself overnight, and that expanded my roving range to a several mile radii from my house.
It didn’t matter, once I breached the boundary of the heavily forested hills around our farm, I might as well have been with Meriweather Lewis as he entered the Yellowstone Valley.
My constant companions were the Boy Scout Handbook, my dad’s old survival manual from his Army days, and my dog, a mixed breed, mostly Australian shepherd female named “Mole” due to her expertise at catching burrowing mammals.
When I was twelve, on one particular weekend, I wandered deep into the forest behind my grandparents’ place with the intent of setting up camp close to a spring I had discovered earlier that summer. I hunted early but around noon, I build a weatherproof shelter backed up to a near vertical rock outcropping that some ancient stream had cut from the hills. Having recovered enough dry wood to feed the fire, as night closed in, Mole and I got a fire started and holed up for the night.
Waking up several times during the night to stoke the fire, I noticed that sometime around midnight (I had no watch, so had no idea the time), it had started to sleet a bit and for an hour or so after, I could hear the sleet hitting the old canvas tarp I had used to weatherproof my little lean-to. I woke up to silence several hours later and when I crawled out to get the fire going, the entire forest was dead quiet – and white. A rare Mississippi snow had fallen after the sleet changed over and I don’t think I had ever seen anything as beautiful as I did that morning.
I just sat there with my dog watching the flakes float silently to the leaf covered forest floor, enjoying the warmth of that fire, and thinking that this was what I wanted, and I never wanted it to end.
But it did.
I went on to fall into the track set before me – school, college, marriage, kids, career all the while being pulled along with “progress” and technology until I wound up where I am today.
But to this day, and even though I have connectivity addictions, I still retain an ability to be alone.
My greatest wish is to retreat to an isolated cabin by a lake or river somewhere in Wyoming or Montana but that not being something my wife sees as a fun time, my quest will likely remain unfulfilled.
I never see my kids without their connection to the Matrix. Cell phones, computers, gaming hardware, you name it, they are constantly connected – and they are all in their 30’s, I suspect the younger generation is even more tethered to the Internet.
I can’t imagine kids today spending the night alone in the woods, without that connection – without a phone or even a watch – or that they would see the beauty I saw. The anxiety of even asking them to do that would be overwhelming. They can’t unplug. They have been trained to be a part of a larger collective, even when they are technically alone, they are plugged into an on-line community.
I can imagine that I’m not alone. I’m pretty sure folks of my age can relate similar stories of independence at a young age, even if they happened in far different settings.
The advancement of technology has brought us some magical things, but as with any bargain, it also has taken something from us. I swear that as the Internet brought with it connectivity to all sorts of unlimited knowledge, society has grown dumber. The promise of free intellectual inquiry has turned into dependency on “official truth” and the opportunity for connectivity to allow conversations has led to cancellation of voices.
I believe this connectivity has stolen from us the ability to be alone, and with that it has taken our thirst for independence. We all live in such an age of connectivity; it seems impossible to unplug – and it is even worse for our kids and their kids.
We are a collectivist society in all but name.
I really miss my childhood of roaming in the woods.
Great story, thanks! As a “tomboy” kid who grew up in rural Ohio I can relate to your experience of independence, competence, and ‘alone-ness’ in my youth - camping, hiking, making stuff, pretending I was a pioneer, etc. I think of the internet, cell phones, and connectivity as gifts. WE are the ones who choose to use them prudently - or we decide to let them use us.
As a fellow boomer i share your love of solitude. After retiring 5 years ago i now live on 10 acres in northern MT 50 miles to the nearest city. I am in the middle of a forest and i cannot see my neighbors. The solitude here is truly intoxicating for me.