In praise of wandering and pondering

Opinion

I did a doubletake when I read the Free Press headline on July 2: Cellphones mark 40 years in Canada.

Surely that “40” was a typo? Has it really been that long since we started feeling fettered by our landlines and began opting for free-range calling?

And then I thought of my own early work experience in the late ’80s, working the reception desk of a swanky real estate office in Toronto whose well-heeled sales representative were early adoptors of clunky car phones.

I remember the thrill of taking those first calls from people in moving vehicles and wondering how the heck we had ever lived without such convenience. Of course, back then, only the well-heeled could afford them.

It would be 20 years more before a boss handed me my first iPhone and told me to kiss my personal life goodbye.

Now that cellphones have become ubiquitous in our lives, it’s hard to fathom how we ever got by in the before-times — those old-fashioned, pre-app days when ATMs were shiny newfangled things and you had to actually speak to someone at a restaurant to make a reservation.

Now, I love the convenience of cellphone technology as much as the next person — online banking is the perfect tool for impatient people like me, and language apps make it dead simple to do a lesson whenever you want. But cellphones are designed to trigger interaction. How long can you set your phone down before a notification ping or just pure conditioning has your sweaty palm compulsively reaching out to pick it up again?

Not all of our interactions with our phones feel beneficial. Is it truly a valuable tool that helps us, or have we become shackled to it? Is mindlessly scrolling through yawning cat videos, caustic memes and cheesy ads for products of dubious quality and utility really a good use of our time?

After a warm summer rain one day last week, I set out for a walk, my cellphone in my pocket — but only to silently record my progress on the Steps app.

I walked through Pleasantville in the east end of St. John’s, past empty fields where American troops lived in barracks more than 80 years ago, and on down to the walking trail ringing Quidi Vidi Lake.

I was thinking about cellphones and how much they have changed our lives, how they get us hooked on a steady diet of information through social media — not all of it credible, accurate or even real; how they groom us into thinking that we cannot do without them.

And then I switched that train of thought off and took a good look around me. Saw the rain droplets on the end of spruce branches like beads of mercury. Touched them and felt the warm, clean water run down my wrist. Breathed in the trees’ woodsy scent. Saw patterns on the wet bark.

Heard small birds singing eloquent songs about the splendour of summer, the freshness of things after a downpour — songs that sounded too big for their little feathered bodies.

The trail was a parade route for a convoy of snails, invigorated by the wetness, moving in single file, eyestalks outreaching. I wondered if the crushed stone of the path hurt their soft bodies; remembered reading somewhere that their behaviour suggests they feel pain, and that they have been observed obsessively grooming an injured area of their body like a dog does.

I stopped to talk to a marmalade cat that was lolling on a picnic table, half-asleep, eyes squinting to acknowledge my presence. “You were up too late last night hunting mice, weren’t you?” I scolded. “Now you need to have a nap in the middle of the morning.”

The cat yawned luxuriously.

I continued on, stopping to smell the wild roses that grow in profusion along the trail. Touched their satiny petals, inhaled their perfume.

My progress was impeded at one point by a procession of black and white and brown ducks, their noisy chatter reminiscent of parishioners and clergy animated by the end of a subdued vestry meeting.

A lone frog was singing a monotonous a cappella tune in the section of lake afloat with lily pads, their yellow globes just beginning to open to reveal the petals within. Bull-head lilies they’re called by some in these parts, but Nuphar variegatum has other, more poetic names as well: spatterdock, spadderdock, brandy-bottle.

Seeing them, I understand Monet’s fascination. They stand stock-still on their leafy platforms but look as if they could suddenly move en masse in an aquatic murmuration.

It felt good to think freely, to give myself space and time to breathe and see and smell and feel and hear, without prompts or pings or swipes or a steady stream of curated dreck.

Wandering aimlessly, pondering willy-nilly. It’s a pastime I highly recommend.

Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s.

Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com

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