From One Wilderness to Another

Two days before leaving for the 140 Characters Conference I hiked into the woods of New Hampshire with two of my best friends. We didn’t have smart phones, laptops, or iPads, just dry goods and supplies to keep us alive and warm. I’m not sure what it is about the primitive nature of backpacking that makes me happy. Perhaps it’s the lack of networking that acts as an internal Reset Button. Maybe it’s the fact that I get to play with a different kind of technology (aluminum camp saws, Whisperlite stoves, titanium sporks).

Cut to Monday night in Manhattan, NY. My world grew from a population of three to the City that Never Sleeps. My survival tools change from flint rods and ceramic filters to business cards and CD’s. I hiked seven miles in snow over the weekend, but in NYC I’ll hail a cab to go 10 blocks. I wasn’t struck with a sense that one wilderness is better than the other, just that they are different. Honestly, though, the cabbies of New York City scare me more than the bears of New Hampshire.

I learned two things from my experience last week. One is that we rely on others for wildly varying reasons. Aaron and Brad kept me from freezing to death in the middle of the woods. C.C., Lynette, and Jeff kept me from looking like a nobody in a sea of important somebodies.

I mentioned recently how often I need to thank the people around me. Part of it is simply the nature of running a business as a one-man operation, but in my case I think I’m just surrounded by extraordinarily generous people.

The other thing that I discovered is how adaptable we are. To retrieve and sterilize your own drinking water one day and present the future of technology with major-label execs the next is quite the paradigm shift. It’s enough to make me wonder what else we’re capable of when we step out of our comfortable living rooms and into the scary world of bears and cabbies.