06

Sep 2018

walk in the woods

If you go walking in the woods without your iphone, and don’t record it, did you go?

By: Odyssey General
Tags: life observation, Philosophical thoughts

This week we thought we’d push into the philosophical thought raising questions regarding observation and perception.

Earlier this year I went walking in the jungles of Laos over several days. On the last day it was raining heavily, as only it can in Asian jungles.  Given that I was committed to the walk, it only seemed right to get out there as light as possible, and get the walk done. In cutting down weight, and acknowledging that iphones don’t do particularly well in torrential downpours, I made the decision to leave my iphone at home.

Now in these days when we probably don’t allow our iphones to wander more than a couple of metres away from our person, this turned out to be particularly difficult. Leaving alone the need for the flashlight when we eventually arrived at the cave, I couldn’t use the google maps to really know where I was, nor how far I had come. Nor could I use the phone were there an emergency, which if you saw the bamboo jungle we were trekking through, then the likelihood of an emergency was pretty high. So armed only with a raincoat and water bottle, I completed several hours of water soaked, muddy trekking.

On getting home that day, and after a hot shower, I had this sense that the day had passed without stopping for the many photos that we tend to take, but there was also more time to consider the trek while on the trek, and make a different set of memories.

In not having my iphone, I was more careful to observe and think about my surroundings.

Perhaps then I’d put this out there. We can only truly perceive and live our life if we take the time to down tools (and iphones) and engage honestly with our environment, and the important people in our environment.

Ps the photo this week is from a few days before hand, watching a butterfly land in a stream to drink.

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