It's easy to feel overwhelmed by change in today's world. Especially what with computers and the internet and astronauts and satellites orbiting distant planets--all within the last four decades. Talk about stretching the mind! Some who purport to be better-brained than we run-of-the-mill types are less than warm in their space program embrace because an advanced learning curve about where we've been and who we are might blow their dogma about where we're going and how many of us will make it.

Then there are folks among us who, never having suffered through typing classes in junior high school, just can't face up to the trauma of punching a computer switch. And that's not even to mention the wonders of the world-wide web. I find it overwhelming that we can actually see a Kalahara bushman seeking information on pre-natal care of his fifth child by his third wife.

I just spent the weekend with a guy who sent a photo from a remote wilderness location to Jane's and my daughter in a town in California. He accomplished this feat using a hand-held cell phone called a "Droid." Right now there're running arguments about whether I-Pods are better than Droids, or whether a "Bluetooth" is better than both of the above. Take pictures with your cell phone? Send it to a distant continent? No problem with any of 'em.

There's little doubt that our generation is in the throes of change more overwhelming than that faced by any prior generation. . . .

That so?

My father walked this earth before automobiles or airplanes; before there was such a thing as radios or television. Yet he saw them all. Has our technological world turned life any more upside-down for our ambiguous generation than for the generation that saw the age of flight, carriages without horses, and voices reporting Hitler's rape of Poland from a half-world away? His "world upside-down" was forty years in duration, too.

Recently Jane and I were on a journey that took us down the Columbia River, into Oregon. We spent the night parked along that mile-wide behemoth of a river, watching monstrous barge after monstrous barge ply their way up or down that mighty flood. At one point I muttered, "What do you suppose Lewis and Clark and their men thought as they paddled dugout canoes down this vast river to the sea?"

"No highways or railroads along its shores," Jane murmured.

"No paper mills or yard lights, either."

"No jetports or aluminum plants."

"No shopping malls or high-rise office buildings."

We both paused at thought of how this river and all its surrounding country was once wild. The following morning we journeyed on. Soon snow-capped Mount Hood popped up from the Cascade Mountains' skyline and we passed an Old Oregon Trail historical marker. Then it hit me! I blurted, "The first wagon trains rolled into Oregon in 1843!"

She frowned. "Yes, they must have made the journey some time. What are you getting at?"

"Lewis and Clark! Don't you see?" She shook her head, plainly puzzled. "Lewis and Clark made their epic voyage of discovery barely forty years before! Forty years from first discovery to settlement. My God, think of it Jane! What changes did that generation see in forty years?"

 

UNREAL VIRTUAL REALITY

 

I've met 'em before and so have you, though they try to hide their addiction from the prying eyes of we ordinary people. Their death-like pallor singles them out like polar bears in a rain forest. Sunlight hurts their eyes. Out among the populace they have the frightened mein of cottontails caught in the middle of a supermarket parking lot at high noon.

They're computer nerds. And their uniform is usually that of a skateboarder gone frumpy. I've adjusted to the ponytails and earrings and, given a modicum of fertilizer and a little attention, their scraggly Charlie Chan beards might someday amount to something that would cause my mouth to fall agape. Bill Gates set the standard some years ago, representing their most advanced upscale model--supercilious and vacuous, lord of all he surveys simply because he cornered the squiggly byte market.

These people really are dominant in their field, and their field really does threaten to overwhelm the world we know and with which we're most comfortable. But at what price! "How much time do you spend in front of your computer screen?" I asked the cursor warrior who regaled me on his vision of potential book sales via the internet.

"Oh about five hours per day, but some of that time is devoted to my studies program."

"Which is?"

"Computer sciences. I have one more quarter to my degree."

The lad, who really is no longer a lad--more like twenty-five or thirty years old--had scanned my books before telling me he likes the outdoors and spends a lot of time hiking with his fiance (who will soon graduate with a degree in botany). So I asked, "Isn't a third of your waking house in front of a day-glo screen sort of at odds with inclinations toward outdoors adventure?"

"Why?" he asked. "We're rapidly advancing, as a society, toward the day when a person can satisfy literally all material needs from his own living room. Right now I can do most of my shopping and all my banking through my computer. I can pay bills. I can even have an active social life there--after all, I met my future wife through my computer."

"What about earning a living--a job?"

He laughed. "With my degree, I'll be able to work as a computer programmer from my own home office."

I'll confess that what he said jolted me. I mumbled, "And you call that having a life?"

"I call it being master of my own destiny."

I thought of sun-kissed mountain peaks with a dusting of snow on their crowns. I thought of burbling brooks, elk bugling, and trout dimpling the evening quiet of a glass-smooth sylvan lake. Who will interpret these things for this guy who's almost certain to come to the end of his life experiencing important stuff only through "virtual reality." And I wondered what memories the poor guy will have when he's my age?

"Do you have something in your eye?" he asked, fumbling to offer me a handkerchief.

I shook my head. "No, thank you. It's more like something in my gut."

 

Next week? A walk on the wild side.

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