Hmmm. I may have come on a bit strong (and I am also not a survivalist.) I tend to limit my gadgets because I find I don’t need them. I, too, have spent those long winter nights in a tent; I’ve always been tired enough that I fell asleep pretty much right away, and stayed asleep for 10 hours. If I did need something to do, I’d pull out my map, and start looking at tomorrow’s route. But that’s just me, and I didn’t intend to mean everyone should be me. (And I’m very sure your music never is loud enough for anyone else to hear.)

But on the whole, I try to avoid gadgets. Perhaps a large part of it has to do with where I hike. Here in the East, wildness is somewhat elusive and tenuous. It comes in small chunks, is rarely remote, and bleed-over from civilization is hard to avoid (airplanes, distant road noise, etc.) Not using GPS, or radio, or phone apps does, for me, help preserve what wildness I can find. Cell phone? Yes, I bring one - at my wife’s insistance - but it goes on airplane mode and stays there, tucked deep in my pack, untouched until I get back to the car. Cameras? I’m never offended by someone taking a picture, but I never carry one myself. It makes me feel like a spectator rather than a participant (but that also carries over into my everyday life; Karol and I have precious few photos of birthday parties and such, but we do have some great memories of being at those parties and enjoying our kids as we played with them.)

Crowds further diminish that sense of wildness, and with crowds come their gadgets - which invariably do intrude on my experience. Crowds also diminish wildness, around here, in another important way: they destroy things. I don’t mean they go out to purposely smash things up; it’s the sheer numbers that do the damage. One example: the Red River Gorge in Kentucky is one of the most beautiful areas I’ve ever seen. I haven’t been there in 10 years, though, because the area is being loved to death. You can’t walk any of the trails without encountering dozens of people, even on weekdays. Trails are being closed into the more ravaged areas. The last time I was there, you couldn’t find a quiet spot to camp. If you camped in the valley, you were part of the herd (mostly divided into loud, raucous groups) using the pounded down campsites that now line every stream; if you managed to find a secluded spot up on a ridge, you had the noise rising from the valley campsites on either side of you: boom boxes, guitars, loud conversations, and “Yahooo” all night long. The next day, you passed remnants of campfires where there should have been none, complete with beer cans and Jim Beam bottle fragments. Oddly enough, there is a small designated wilderness area adjacent to the Gorge, that has about 10 miles of trail (no room left over for bushwhacking); there is enough buffer that the sound doesn’t carry over. It’s not well-maintained trail (blowdowns aren’t promptly cleared, for example), and as a result the crowds avoid it like the plague. I still go there occasionally for an overnight trip - but spots like that are few, small, and far between. There is definitely a sense of the wild there.

I think that’s what probably got me coming on a bit strong. We need a certain number of tools when we go out (I’m not advocating for leaving my pack behind), but beyond the stuff I need to stay warm, dry, fed, and found, I tend to shun the rest in order to preserve what precious little sense of the wild I can find around here. And I enjoy myself every time.