a picture or a thousand words
plus three beach books
When we arrived at the Duke Marine Lab for our Blue Theology program Friday night, I collected cell phones and chargers and furrowed brows and complaints from the high school students. Not all of them had seen the emailed warning.
There are lots of reasons I decided to make our week of learning about ocean conservation and God phone-free (including, for instance, that I didn’t want the students to be doordashing food or any other items over to camp, and I didn’t want anybody to have to worry that someone might be videoing them at any moment), but the main reason — and the one I gave to them — was that I hoped that this week we would be fully present to each other, to the created world around us, and free from other tethers.1
I told them about being twenty years old and backpacking around Europe before the advent of smart phones. All I had was my backpack and my train ticket. No one could track me, and no one could get in touch with me, and I had to figure things out by talking to strangers and by interpreting paper maps and train terminal signs. I tried to make it sound as glorious as it was. And maybe I succeeded; for the most part, they’ve been very content without those tiny computers all week.
I’ve been the primary photographer for this trip, part of my promise to parents and to kids. After today’s field trip, sorting through pictures, I found myself thinking about the reasons I gave for taking up their phones, and I found myself wondering if I wished I had smart-phone pictures from my summer backpacking. So many of my memories and images of that summer are completely gone. If I could go back and give myself a smart phone to take to Europe in 2002, just for the ease of taking pictures, would I do it?
I don’t have many pictures, but what I do have are journals, pages where I tried to capture what I saw and how it made me feel. And even if they’re less comprehensive than a cloud of photos would be, I think that’s what I prefer, because in my journal it’s not just an image, and it’s not just how I chose to frame it, it’s also what I was thinking about and feeling as I saw it. It’s not just an image, it’s a mind capturing an image. It’s not just the picture of the rail cabin, but my mind choosing to note the steam off the paper cups of coffee, the slow grunting snores of my bunk mate, the green of the fields and which song lyrics it reminded me of.
I wonder how much my camera always in my pocket has contributed to the death of my journaling habit. I wonder if — for instance — I hadn’t had this smart phone when my kids were toddlers, if I would have written more about them, about the experience of being a mother of toddlers. I wonder what things I would actually record of my life now if I wasn't constantly opening my camera app.
Three Things:
Themed reading: the three best books I read for this trip were Grayson by Lynne Cox, a true account of a seventeen year old swimming with a baby whale who had been separated from his mother (Rosie also gives this book a ringing endorsement); How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler, a book of moving essays that braid marine science with memoir and cultural criticism; and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light, one of my all-time favorites. (For my Summer I Turned Pretty pals, listen to this plot line: a teenager spends the summer at the beach with her family, as she always does, only this summer, one of them is about to die of cancer. Meanwhile, three different boys vie for her affection. Sound familiar? Now add 17th century poetry, theological questions, a marine research lab, and communication with dolphins…)
Spicy corn and coconut soup — I ate this three times last week and did not grow tired of it! And I was lazy and used frozen corn rather than fresh. Just don’t skip the cilantro and peanuts and lime on top.
Where Goodness Still Grows is available wherever books are sold. My first book, Dangerous Territory, has a second edition coming this fall; sign up for the Bracket newsletter to learn more.
Remember “wherever you are, be all there”?
I think about this, too. Sometimes the memories seem clearer from the years without the phone. I also wish I was writing more about motherhood. That said, in my experience, I’m much more likely to look at the pictures I’ve taken, in various seasons, than I am to reread old journals. I mostly keep my smartphone for the camera, but the lure of its convenience is strong; something I wrestle with, for sure.