You can look at this tree on a screen, but can you smell it, feel it, or climb it? Now you want to climb it, don’t you? …Sorry about that.
After putting up my last post over a week ago, I turned off my laptop, literally unplugging it for one week’s time. This time ended at the stroke of midnight last Friday night (technically Saturday, I suppose), and I would be lying to you if I said that turning it back on wasn’t the first thing I did. I would also be lying to you, however, if I told you that I didn’t enjoy the time in between those two events.
That week, in truth, included some of the best days I’ve had this summer. I still had a few tasks in the week that required a computer, so I did use the office computer or the computers at the library a few times, but all in all it was a fairly computer-free week. I found that, suddenly, I had a lot more free time that I didn’t know what to do with. I also got more inventive in doing the work that I did have to do. During the week I was able to experience: visiting a park I had wanted to see all summer long, reading a number of books I hadn’t finished, spending some great times hanging out with housemates, playing music instead of listening to it, and enjoying a great film and discussion with a group I had discovered on Couchsurfing the week before.
The film was called “Play Again” and it couldn’t possibly have been more fitting for the experiment I was doing. The premise was this: take ten kids who spend an average of 15 hours a day in front of screens: computers, cell phones, televisions, gaming systems, etc., and put them in a wilderness camp for a week. With the help of a few adult supervisors, they would spend the camp week sleeping in tents in the woods learning a variety of wilderness skills. By interviewing the early-teens throughout the process, the filmmakers were able to give us honest impressions of each child’s reactions. While the responses were varied among the campers, there was at least one common thread: it was a radically new experience for all; in many ways it blew their minds, exploded their worldviews. Learning wilderness skills like making a fire, building a bow, and using herbs to soothe mosquito bites not only gave them a greater perspective on the roots of the modern world, but it also gave them the opportunities to form relationships. (more…)
The Llama and the Cow 