I borrow this title from a novel by Wallace Stegner.
We have dear friends who just returned from a cruise of the Danube. They left the country while Judy’s mom was sick with pneumonia. She needed to stay in touch, and thanks to the rapidly developing digital world, she was able to pop into an internet café or otherwise borrow a laptop from a shipmate.
One rainy afternoon, I shared a beer with Mida Smith. Among other things, we talked about a bicycle ride she and Tim took across the USofA in 1999. Mida reminisced that, “It was the greatest feeling of freedom I’ve ever had in my life.”
On one hand, we have the digital connection on the Danube, and on the other a near independence from that sort of thing across the Kansas plains.
When I ride my bike, my mobile is always on in my back pocket. But I beg only a silent comfort. Otherwise, when it rings, the aggravation level rises to distraction. Jilly Whiting’s phone invariably rings at least three times while we’re riding. Then we must endure repeated reminder beeps.
We are children with digital toys. We must have them, and yet we reject these tools when we seek our freedom of solitude.
The other day, a young man rode his hot crotch rocket past my condo. Looking like Tom Cruse in Top Gun, he dismounted and immediately pushed up his shades and flipped open his phone. Solitude done; back to the world. Or one's internal vision of one's world?
Here’s a thought. We could ride our bicycle from Freeport to LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Certainly, some of those rural roads run through hills inaccessible to the cellular net. Then if we have a problem, we must seek out a stranger to visit with. Perhaps this is partly what Mida meant by feeling freedom.
Is it an opportunity to solve problems on one’s own or approach a stranger on a personal level and gather a smile. How self satisfying this can be as opposed to a raucous too familiar flip phone stuck in your ear and a vacuous too familiar conversation.
