(July 2 – 5th, 2026)
I am a man of the mountains. The only times I have ever lived near the sea was as a young child in Virginia, which I hardly remember; during my university years along the frozen shores of Finland; one spectacular bohemian summer bumming around Homer, Alaska; and my two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in coastal Ecuador, although it was still an adventurous 2hr open-air chiva ride from the verdant tropical foothills to the nearest beach I could surf at. The last decade of my life in Colorado has been about as far from the infinite horizon of a dreamy coastline as possible.
That said, I really enjoyed the novelty of pausing for several days on the Black Sea in city of Batumi after crossing the border into Georgia. I secured a relatively luxurious and cheap hotel just blocks from the beach which featured a great balcony to play guitar on with the smell of the sea breeze tantalizingly close.
Batumi is Georgia’s second city and presents itself in an incredibly different light from the capital, Tblisi. Many locals disdain its recent boom of incessant high rise condo construction and the string of casinos along the coastal promenade, but if you look past that, there is still an enjoyable low-key old town and lovely seaside boardwalk populated with palms and eccentric, yet dazzling, art displays. I thoroughly indulged myself while I began plotting out what precisely would become my plans for mountain adventures once I moved onward towards Tblisi and beyond.
A particularly impressive piece of giant, slow action artwork in the Batumi harbor.
In between reviewing routes and organizing information, potential partners, and logistics for the first of my hikes to the region of Racha, I would settle into several hours of beachside lounging, reading, swimming, and sunset gazing.
It was at this most ultimate point of leisure of having properly slowed down and allowing my consciousness to drift and meditate on the infinite and hypnotizing azure horizon that it really began to strike me how many of the beachgoers around me were far from doing the same…they were head down lost in their phones.
I chuckled. How many people look forward to a beachside vacation for weeks to “get away from it all” just to ignore the magic of the place they’ve traveled to and get drawn back into doom-scrolling or envy-swiping?
I wondered how many them were looking at posts of others sitting at an even nicer beach and felt a pang of jealously for not being in Antalya instead. I also fantastically observed one young woman spend a whole half-hour taking perhaps one hundred selfies during the most explosive of sunsets. By the time she finished, the sun had sank and the colors finally faded with their last glorious salvos of crimson and burnt orange.
Did she see the sunset with her own eyes at all?
Clearly, people are at liberty to live and enjoy their lives as they wish. It does not truly bother me, but as a traveler, one takes a role of nearly full-time observer given the constant stimulus of new surroundings, people, and culture. Perhaps because of the consistently novel discovery, such observation is continuously engaging and interesting enough to feel I need not look for satisfaction and entertainment elsewhere. And what I wanted to believe was a uniquely American epidemic, is undoubtedly a global pandemic affecting the lack of attention span in humanity the world over. It’s even categorizable as an industry denoted as the attention span economy in which you (we) are the resource. It’s so effective and successful that I think it is not a far stretch of imagination to foresee deteriorating neck and eye conditions in the masses at early ages given the terrible posture and extended screen time exposure to our retina.
How we have devolved from times of evolutionarily obtained acute awareness and the age of slaying the tiger…
People are often no longer where they are, but somewhere completely else…nearly all the time. Just look up and around at people sitting next together at restaurants, attending business meetings, walking down the street, or even driving their cars. It’s truly alarming.
Perhaps I am an old school curmudgeon making something out of nothing. After all, I spent the latter part of my twenties living in an isolated South American village without cell signal or Internet, so it could be I am simply just more at ease with myself and the environment around me, but I truly feel a whole mass of modern humanity is missing out on life as a whole. When you are laying on your death bed, its not the reels, Facebook/Instagram stories, or memes that you are going to wish having spent more time dedicated to.
I do not have an Instagram or Tiktok account, but from what I casually observe of others scrolling endlessly, and seemingly unsatisfactorily, I do not think I am missing anything of real value. Even as I travel, people ask why I do not have an Instagram instead of a blog to reach a bigger audience (no one reads blogs anymore they say)? I specifically respond that I do not want to play the game of competing in feeds seeking the attention span of a gnat, rather to appeal to a select few that take note of something of particular thoughtfulness and substance and can appreciate the lost art of long-form crafted composition.
I think this is why I love travel and particularly backpacking into the wilderness so much. It serves as a true engagement with real life experience without entirely unrelated or meaningless distractions. Just you, those around you, and your surroundings, as it was for millennia. The Internet and the rest of the world will still be there when you choose to tune in again, trust me. And I am not championing a radical and spartan declaration of withdrawal from social media and phones outright, just less. Even a little bit. I even name my smart phone hotspot Slave Screen so as not to forget what I do not want to become. I have my own weakness, too.
Next time you go for your phone, try to leave it where it is.
Look up. Look around.
Smile at the person nearest you.
If they return the favor, start a conversation. If they do not, give your mind the luxury to wonder on to the next particular thing or detail in your periphery. I think you will be amazed at what you take notice of, the capacity of your mind to reveal a refreshing thought, or the fascinating conversation you may find yourself engaged in.
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