In a world where it’s hard to find the time to stop and enjoy the journey, I made it a personal goal around a year ago to begin to make personal time with family and friends a priority. A huge focus of which was more vacations with my wife and more time with my son as he moves up into his pre-teen years.
With that, my Father in law or “Suegro” as I affectionately refer to him as, myself, and my 12-year-old son, Adrian, headed out to Guadalupe Peak National Park on July 15th for 4 days of primitive camping and hiking. Now, all three of us have been putting in quite a few hours working on our hiking skills and had all picked up some cool new gear, so needless to say, we were all pretty stoked to be able to spend 4 days in one of the true Meccas of Texas backcountry hiking.
Outside of the hiking bravado that I’ve been ate up with for the past couple of years, this trip also had another broader purpose. The past year I’ve noticed that Adrian has become a little more independent, which is expected and normal, but I’ve also noticed that he’s become a lot more obsessed with technology and gaming, most notably, his cell phone.
Now, Adrian is my only child but I share time with him with his mother in San Antonio about 30 minutes away. With Adrian starting jr high this past year in the 6th grade, his mother felt he needed to have a cell phone to be able to communicate about when he got home from school, got out of practice, etc. I wasn’t a fan of the idea originally, but went along with the concept as a lot of co-parents do. Since then I’ve noticed that his attention has more and more about his phone and less and less about anything else, thus, let’s go to the middle of nowhere and “disconnect”.
This was a wonderful trip. Adrian and I hiked almost 9 miles to the highest point in Texas and were treated to some of the most amazing views in the country. All three of us hiked down a beautiful trail to an abandoned cabin out in McKittrick Canyon named the “The Pratt Lodge”. We also did some exploring up on old Pine Top that leads to an enchanted pine forest that is hidden up on a mountain in the middle of the Chihuahua desert. Over 4 days, we hiked almost 20 miles and shared experiences with each other that I’ll remember throughout my days.
I learned a few things on this trip that make it that much worth it. Here’s the main ones…
- Don’t go cheap on a walking stick or hiking boots.
- It’s not about the distance of the hike, it’s about the elevation change.
- There are some crazy people out there that like to walk around trails with 1000 ft. drops at night with
flashlights - Mountain Lions are much larger than Bobcats.
- Rattlesnakes are able to make rhythmic music with their rattles when they are trying to warm themselves up.
And several other poignant takeaways that will make me better over the coming months and years.
The most impactful lesson of this past week was first watching my son not be able to put down his phone even 350 miles from any type of civilization. Yes, At&t delivers cell service now to the farthest corners of the Texas badlands, great work At&t! I even saw woman call her friend from the summit of Guadalupe Peak as I paused to bask in the awesomeness of reaching the top.
When planning this trip I didn’t even think or worry about taking the phone from Adrian as I just assumed we wouldn’t get signal and we’d be living in the wilderness disconnected from everything. It wasn’t until I had to be that DAD and tell him to put it away or he’d lose it that I actually got to enjoy my kid out in nature like I envisioned when I planned this trip.
We went on from there after going ‘unplugged” and had great laughs and inspiring experiences, so much so that we’ve already planned our next trip to Palo Duro Canyon next year for more reconnecting with wilderness. But it’s so clear to me now that I’m going to have to make some hard decisions with Adrian about technology built to steal his attention, or even worse, build an addiction. Technology is built to now keep him tuned in even in the middle of nowhere. I can’t in good faith continue to go along with this level of technological evolution knowing, and seeing firsthand, just how hard it is for young people to escape that trap.
I’ve already discussed it but the cell phone is no longer allowed at my home. In fact, I’m hoping that his mother will agree that we need to cancel it all together until he can show that he is mature enough to be able to put it down and go do something else.. It won’t be a popular decision, but my only hope is that over time Adrian will understand what I saw this week before the phone went away and know that this decision will free him in so many ways to just be a kid again…
Great read!