A Forgotten Glow
An Invitation to Set the Screens Aside and Walk Outside
“I’m here because I sit in front of a screen all day and I just…I dunno, I felt like I needed something else.”
“Yeah, the screens thing. I saw this come across my email, and I was like, I need that.”
“I feel all that. Our kids are on screens a lot. We know it’s not great, but then we saw this and figured it was a good way to show them something else. And also show us something else.”
Twenty-eight people were gathered in a circle on a campground in Bastrop, Texas, and our Camping 101 Guide had invited us to introduce ourselves with two things:
Name
Why we signed up for Camping 101
And within minutes the campground felt like an AA meeting.
City and suburban-centric people were confessing their near-addiction to screens, their lament about screens, their ache for another way.
To be sure, nobody had been talking about screens ahead of this moment. Nobody had signed up for a screen detox. We had signed up for Camping 101 and arrived as strangers to one another. And yet nearly to a person, screens were mentioned aloud.
Please take me from the shiny screen! Let me jump into this wild unknown!
“So,” the Guide said in response to everyone’s input. “Good news. No screens are allowed in this vicinity.” She pointed to the large, communal gathering area where we sat in a circle.
“We understand if you need to take a call from family or a quick thing for work, but do that out there,” and she pointed to a field fifty yards away. “And as much as possible - try and keep it short. Give yourself the full gift of why you came. To not be in front of screens and discover something else. Something more.”
—
It’s not that screens are some terrible evil. Goodness, I wrote this on a screen, and you are reading it on one! We readily appreciate the myriad of ways screens are both beneficial and essential to a lot of modern life at this point.
And… we know their glow has a power over us that is hardly neutral.
Perhaps that is related to why I’ve noticed a not-insignificant number of people in my life commenting lately about…
A desire to go with a flip phone (and a few have).
Or a desire for more real plants in the house, office, or both.
Or a desire to sign up their kids for schools that have some or even most of the learning done outside (and perhaps not accidentally I’ve seen a notable uptick in educational institutions offering just that).
Or a desire to move from the urban or suburban setting to a place where the trees visibly outnumber the people (and some friends and colleagues have done this very thing in recent years).
Or a desire to have their wedding not in a place of worship or a grand hall but somewhere like a farm, barn, or ranch (a topic I’ve written about previously in Why Everyone Wants Their Wedding on a Farm).
And my recent campground confessional undoubtedly made clear that screens are part of what is motivating this ache for more outdoor time - though it is hardly the only thing. A host of factors are at work in this rising outdoor desire, and that is probably worthy of a whole other post.
But one significant factor?
I find that when people discover a growing desire to get closer to the land, the trees, and the great outdoors in general, it’s usually about something more than looking for a nice break or a little fun (even if that is what we say aloud).
Usually, that growing desire is a sign that Something deep within is…
Tugging.
Calling.
Inviting us to get grounded again. In every sense of the word.
Have you heard that invitation recently?
“For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” — Mary Oliver
—
Once the sun set on the Saturday evening of our Camping 101 outing, our two boys found their slumber fairly quickly. What else is there to do once you’ve had your s’mores?
So, Michelle and I tip-toed out of our tent to the nearby campfire where several folks were gathered.
Eventually, it was only the two of us alongside our two Camping 101 Guides. We spent the next two hours with them talking about snakes and archeology digs and suburban life and hunting and life trajectories and finding your true self and toddler sleeping patterns and public schools and the stunning organizational abilities of ants and the interdependence of ecosystems and what trees know that we don’t.
And more.
Honestly, we went round and round with the light stuff, the heavy stuff, and everything in between. And time felt like moments.
Eventually, the embers grew small. All that we could see was the quiet glow on one another’s faces.
“Probably time to call it a night,” someone said, speaking for us all.
“Well thanks,” I said as I looked over at our Guides. “It’s not often we have time and space to enjoy this kind of conversation.”
One of them smiled. And then whispered, “Truth is, that’s what the fire is for.”
The comment caught me.
I’d always known that a campfire is great for food and warmth.
But I’d never really thought about the way it feeds conversation. Or the way it makes people glow. Or the way it illumines the heart-and-mind.
—
We’d arrived running from one kind of light - and experienced another kind. Or remembered, really, another kind that we’ve long known about and sometimes forget.
Fortunately, the soul never powers down.
It only knows to keep…
Tugging.
Calling.
Inviting.
And now you know how start a fire!!
There’s nothing quite like a campfire to gather folks. At Halloween one of the neighbors had a solo stove and brought it out on the cul-de-sac. Such good visiting! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your crew!