A Place Without Screens

I typically stare at two flat screen monitors for several hours every work day. My iPod has a screen. My cell phone has a screen. My laptop has a screen. My TV, of course, has a screen. One can even buy a refrigerator with a screen. If technology has its way, many flat surfaces - such as tables, walls, mirrors, etc. - will eventually become screens.

But this weekend I'm taking a break from screens. I'll be backpacking in Colorado, trying to find a place without screens - something that is becoming increasingly difficult to do.

In Walden,Thoreau wrote, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

I will go to the woods to seek a place without screens. I will seek another kind of illumination.