The benefits of being lost and bored

[Chase]

I was reading this 1994 NYT article about the crazy idea of using cell phones in the wilderness and, at first, I found it amusingly historic. After thinking it over for a few days, I wanted to read it again because it fostered some long-lost (pun intended) thoughts on what it means to be truly lost. But, I'd lost (pun intended) the tab and had to use Google to find the article again.
The top search result was a BBC article from just two days ago with the same title, The Lost Art of Getting Lost. Strange coincidences like this coming up in my life a few times a year, like this post where I wondered about goats on Mount Hood and then days later Billri9685 posted a shot of one. (I'm lucky like that).

From the BBC article:

I have misgivings about what we forfeit by never being lost.

and

Discovery used to mean going out and coming across stuff - now it seems to mean turning inwards and gazing at screens. We've become reliant on machines to help us get around, so much so that it's changing the way we behave, particularly among younger people who have no experience of a time before GPS.

I think it is important to distinguish between getting lost in a way that isn't life threatening and getting lost atop Mississippi Head in a blizzard. I'm referring to the former here:

What do people who have only known a world of GPS-in-your-pocket think about getting lost? Do they ever daydream about it and wonder what might happen if they went out without their phone and got lost downtown or in some 100-acre wood?

Even having a phone/GPS with us and not looking at it, does that change potential positive outcomes of getting lost? Do we pay attention to landmarks less (even though we tell ourselves we won't) and diminish our mapping-in-our-brain skills?

Related thought: Does having a phone/GPS make us less bored in certain circumstances and change our thoughts when it might be better to be bored?

I haven't been bored at all lately and maybe I'm escaping to a fantasy world where that happens. I'd really like to know what people think about these types of things.

[pdxgene]

When I'm off in the wilderness, I'm off in the wilderness. I don't own a gps and my cellphone is a Tracfone thus of limited use anywhere out in the wilds. In addition I live alone and don't have any family so no one really knows where I am and I tend to change my mind at the last minute some days so it wouldn't do any good to tell anyone anyway. I love going off in untracked snow in the winter.
I do however know my winter routes from multiple summer uses so I'm generally unconcerned with getting lost. Mis-directed occasionally for sure. But not lost. Not yet at least...

[mreha]

The article on boredom was interesting; it reminded me of something I read a while back in a book on Buddhist psychology. I'll have to paraphrase it because I don't have the book with me, but the author (a Buddhist monk) said something like:

"Sometimes Americans come to spend time at a Zen monastery, and they participate in all the Zen activities like the tea ceremony, and when they come back they say things like 'Everything was so deliberate and meaningful, I really loved it'. But they're totally missing the point - the Zen lifestyle is designed to be boring! Everything is done very deliberately and methodically because cultivating boredom is important."

I do bring my phone for its GPS capabilities because I have to admit that I have a fear of getting lost, especially since I almost always hike alone, but on the other hand I don't use it to entertain myself...in fact, I don't even bring a book anymore when I backpack. Even on days when I just camp and don't hike much, I've found that I'm pretty content to just sit and enjoy being in the wilderness.

[Koda]

The benefits of being lost and bored

you cant really master the life skill of being found and entertained until you exercise your ability to be lost and bored... both physically and intellectually. I'm not so certain that technology has anything to do with this.

[Chase]

I do however know my winter routes from multiple summer uses so I'm generally unconcerned with getting lost. Mis-directed occasionally for sure. But not lost. Not yet at least...

...in fact, I don't even bring a book anymore when I backpack. Even on days when I just camp and don't hike much, I've found that I'm pretty content to just sit and enjoy being in the wilderness.

Thanks for your responses. Koda's, too! I picture you guys like Yodas out there in the forests...

Let me ask you this: Can you articulate what you think is advantageous about your styles of wanderings?

[Steve20050]

I used to hike for mileage and snapshots of what I saw. As I've gotten older I started going to where I am looking for a particular scenic spot and a feeling. Many times it's a place I have been in the past. I usually have a certain idea about what I want in my panoramic that helps me visualize the place later, knowing that I may not get back there again. So I sit a whole lot more and am really never bored doing so. I find that I really actually enjoy it better than being frantic about where I have to be as I'm doing that all the rest of the time when in Portland.

I only carry a trac phone also, as it is a honey do. Personally I have never cared about getting lost, I always have extra food. Some of the trac phones I buy do have GPS features or 911 stuff, but I don't use the thing enough to even bother with learning all the features. Once at home it just sits on the shelf and the time/ minutes expire. So then I need to get another Sim? card or just buy another phone...Next year.. I really have never liked mobile phones. I don't have another. I threw it away about 12-14 years back and haven't looked back. Anywhere you go now.. bus stop, break room, etc. Around groups of folks and nobody is talking anymore. They are all somewhere else communicating with someone somewhere and that has always struck me as very odd. Though at home I certainly use the internet, when I have down time. Like now, though I'm supposed to be busy Working on that new pano...

Speaking of getting lost.. One of my life experiences was getting turned around and going in the opposite direction a bunch of times in Patagonia when hiking down there. I was always an outdoors person and had spent an enormous amount of time outside and couldn't figure out why. One day I caught myself looking at the sun and realized that was why. Obviously, the sun in the southern hemisphere goes east to west as the earth spins, but the farther south you are the more it arcs across the sky in the northern hemisphere. Instead of what we are used to here as we look towards the southern hemisphere for the sun's arc. Yes, moss on the south side of the tree It was all a matter of perspective. Oh well. I was so conditioned to this it took concerted effort to remember this. I didn't get turned around any more after that.

[jessbee]

I've been thinking about this ever since I saw this post.

Some of my most memorable travel and hiking experienced have happened after I've said (or thought) something like: I wonder what's down that path... not knowing exactly where it would take me.

This has happened recently on a couple of occasions while out hiking by myself. There's something uniquely meaningful about feeling like you've discovered something, totally by accident, instead of reaching it via some prescribed route that you've memorized and navigated directly to. Not to diminish that experience in any way, since it's also rewarding to set a goal and reach it as planned.

Yesterday I put together a roughly 10-mile hiking loop at the coast that mostly used trail but there was one off-trail section that started off through lovely sand dunes then took me into a gnarly bit of scrubby vegetation that was taking over the sand. I saw more animal tracks on that short off-trail hike than I think I ever have anywhere, ever. Bird, rodent, snake and even bear tracks! My phone battery was low so I couldn't use the GPS app, just navigated by sight and the sound of the ocean. Really incredible.

It's so anti- where civilization is going. Few people "get it" when I try to share these experiences and how meaningful they were to me. Do you have the same issue? It's hard to explain it to someone who's never gotten off the grid and explored on their own before. Is it even possible to communicate the value without having the experience yourself?

Chase, we totally need to hike together again so we can ponder the value of getting lost...

[mreha]

Thanks for your responses. Koda's, too! I picture you guys like Yodas out there in the forests...

Let me ask you this: Can you articulate what you think is advantageous about your styles of wanderings?

Explain it I cannot, try it you must

Seriously, though...I think the value of boredom is that, if you stay with it instead of resisting it, it helps eliminate distractions that keep you from being fully present. Most people, myself included, will tend to seize onto any distraction they can, external or internal, in order to prevent them from just being with themselves. Being fully present is something that's important to me, but it's something that I have to work at in my daily life, except when I'm out in the wilderness - then it's almost like my default mode, and that's probably the biggest reason why I enjoy the outdoors. For me, when I'm in nature it's practically effortless to slip into that state of just being rather than thinking about the past or planning about the future. I suspect that a lot of hikers would relate to that, even if they might not describe it in the same kind of terms.

[jessbee]

I think the value of boredom is that, if you stay with it instead of resisting it, it helps eliminate distractions that keep you from being fully present.

Nailed it. It is much easier to be mindful when out in the wilderness than in the front country. I'll add that is is even easier when in the wilderness and alone. I find that when hiking with others, it is easy to assume someone else is paying attention and just lapse into conversation. I don't think it's coincidence that several of my most memorable outdoor experiences have been solo treks.

[mreha]

Nailed it. It is much easier to be mindful when out in the wilderness than in the front country. I'll add that is is even easier when in the wilderness and alone. I find that when hiking with others, it is easy to assume someone else is paying attention and just lapse into conversation. I don't think it's coincidence that several of my most memorable outdoor experiences have been solo treks.

Absolutely! I almost always hike alone for that exact reason.