On a connected planet, you can’t run away from technology — you have to manage it. | Illustration: Tavis Coburn

A few years ago, my wife and I spent three weeks hiking the backcountry of California. We walked more than 200 miles without crossing a road—and even better, without fielding any calls, emails, tweets, or other day-to-day Internet bullshit. It was heavenly. But at trail’s end, as we stood atop Mount Whitney, looking over the unfolding American West, I was appalled to see smartphones everywhere. People were snapping photos and sending texts; one woman was even making calls. We sniffed at the jibber-jabberers, walked down to the trailhead, and hitchhiked back into Yosemite, where our car was parked, feeling pretty smug. That sentiment fell off a cliff a few days later when I arrived at WIRED’s offices.

As I began telling my story to a colleague, he stopped me cold: “Did you bring GPS?” I said that I had. “Well, that’s not really being out in the wilderness,” he replied. And he kind of had a point.

Everyone has a different definition of getting away from it all. By some definitions, my clean break wasn’t so clean. Even during my most remote moments in the backcountry, satellite signals bounced down to tell me exactly where I was.

The practice of taking an intentional break from technology and civilization is probably as old as technology and civilization. But it seems increasingly urgent now, in an era when the Internet—and thus most of the planet—is as close as an iPhone. We go to seek waldeinsamkeit, as the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson described it—the feeling of being alone in the woods.

This feeling is prominent in our written history. In Heart of Darkness, the protagonist, Charles Marlow, is driven by his desire to visit the few remaining blank spaces on the map. That is, more or less, how many of us plan our vacations today. Of course, the rivers and valleys and borders were long ago mapped; our blank spaces are the few remaining holes in the global communications network. We go where it’s impossible to connect, no matter what. But quite soon those gaps will all be filled. Before much longer, the entire planet will be smothered in signal, and we won’t be able to find places that are off the grid.

bring your iPhone into the backcountry, but resist the urge to open the email app.

We’re already nearly there. Take a look at the National Telecommunications & Information Administration’s broadband coverage maps for the US online and you’ll see a nation that is painted almost solid blue, save for some very high mountains and sparsely populated deserts. Internationally, even formerly isolated countries like Laos and Bhutan are becoming smartphone-friendly as Internet access becomes more and more widespread. And if telecom towers can’t do it, satellites, Google balloons, and Mark Zuckerberg are all working to bring the global cacophony to even the loneliest outposts.

Which means we’re now seeing some pretty bizarre attempts to get away from it all. Technology critic Evgeny Morozov famously puts his router and phone in a safe with a timer lock when he needs to be free of distractions. Techno-isolation is one of Burning Man’s many appeals (though citizens of the playa are increasingly willing and able to Instagram or tweet their escapades in the desert). There are now multiple high-end summer camps for adults, and part of what you pay for is having counselors enforce strict no-phone, no-camera policies.

Those may be silly examples, but they’re worth thinking about. We’re living in a remarkable time, when it will soon be impossible to be truly alone. Waldeinsamkeit becomes more and more endangered with every cell tower. And if you’re the kind of person who can only leave email behind when you go off the grid, that means you’re going to need a new plan. Our streets are already filled with people staring into their hands. So are our dinner tables and cafès, even our living rooms and bedrooms. Rather than focusing on taking temporary breaks from technology, we need the discipline to live with it at all times. We can’t rely on a mountain or a remote wasteland to create waldeinsamkeit; we have to create it ourselves.

Want to get away? It’s a big country, but a huge portion of it is smothered in high-bandwidth wireless coverage (shown in orange). Many places that were previously thought to be completely off the grid are now Instagram-friendly hot spots. If you’re really looking to unplug, the connection you have to sever isn’t electronic anymore—it’s mental.

Getting away from technology by leaving it behind becomes a pointless exercise in competitive reductionism. Where do you draw the line? Your smartphone? Your GPS? Your compass? Your tent? Fire?

Here’s a better idea: Shut up and bring your iPhone into the backcountry, but resist the urge to open the email app. If you can’t manage that, delete or turn off the account. Don’t worry, it’ll come back.

Meanwhile, technology can enhance your wilderness experience. The Night Sky mobile app on iOS, for example, can tell you exactly which constellations you’re observing, and it serves up thousands of years of human history. There are other apps that have transformed birding; they can identify species, forecast migrations, even alert you to rare birds in your area. And by tracking your location from your pocket, your phone lets you spend less time squinting at a map and more time looking at the world.

The phone isn’t the problem. The problem is us—our inability to step away from email and games and inessential data, our inability to look up, be it at an alpine lake or at family members. We won’t be able to get away from it all for very much longer. So it’s vitally important that each of us learns how to live with a persistent connection, everywhere we go, whether it’s in the wilderness or at a dinner party.

I still love the wilderness, and I can’t wait for my next trip to the backcountry—to walk for miles without crossing a road, without fielding a call or an email or a tweet. To once again drink deeply from a mountain stream. And to stretch out under the open sky at night, gaze up at the stars, and use my phone to name each and every one.