Beyond the Cul-de-Sac: Finding the Analog Wild

My son came home incredibly upset the other evening. Based on the sobbing and desperation, I thought he’d either had a catastrophic bicycle accident or killed a man with his bare hands. (For the record, he’s eleven.)

As it turned out, the tragedy was a lost earbud. He and his friends had searched until the sun went down, and he came home defeated, dreading the "confession." He had no reason to be that upset other than the fear of disappointing me. I don’t get upset at these type of things; it’s an easy fix, and exactly why I only buy the $20 pair.

As a dad, it’s my job to fix these things. We grabbed a torch and headed out together. He told me it was on the "other side of the neighborhood," so we hopped in the truck. Honestly, I had no idea where he’d actually been roaming, but we set off to find it.

We let our kids roam the neighborhood. I want them to have the childhood I had, the kind where you just come home when the streetlights flick on. Still, it’s a strange new world where an 11-year-old leaves the house with earbuds and a smartphone to listen to music while riding an electric bike. The tech-heavy reality of a modern childhood was spinning through my head as we drove.

He told me to stop in front of a spot on the road. I asked if it was a friend’s house. "No," he said. "The other side."

The other side of the road is a vacant stretch of land, a pocket of East Tennessee that can’t be built on due to sinkholes. With all those thoughts of "digital childhoods" still swirling in my mind, my heart leapt as we left the truck and headed down a steep ridge.

There, under the canopy, was his real world.

For weeks, he and his friends had been escaping into the woods. They were climbing fallen trees, hauling scrap wood from home to build a fort, and traipsing through mud and thicket to blaze new trails. They were sitting in the dirt using their pocket knives to whittle, exploring five acres that probably feels like the sprawl of the Old West to them.

The fact that he had discovered an analog world away from screens, the same world I inhabited at his age, made me the proudest father in the world. He is out there exploring the world through his own eyes, not a glass display. In his pockets, he carries a knife, a handkerchief, a pencil, and a Forge Log.

That discovery negates every worry I have about a life with too much tech.

Find that 11-year-old boy inside you today. Remember what it was like to slow down, blaze your own path, and take in the natural world. Go explore.