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The Lost Art of Getting Lost

September 18, 1994

Not long ago in the Adirondacks on the summit of Mount Marcy, New York's highest mountain, a wilderness ranger was taken aback when a hiker whipped out a cellular phone to call his office more than 300 miles away in Manhattan and report: "I'm not feeling well. I can't make it in to work today."

On the summit of Mount McKinley in Alaska, several years ago, Mark Fincher, a back-country ranger at Yosemite, saw a climber use a hand-held radio to place a phone call to Los Angeles. "It was the strangest thing I've ever confronted," Mr. Fincher said.

Less than a century ago, the naturalist John Muir wrote of riding an avalanche for miles into Yosemite Valley and later surviving on Mount Shasta one blizzardy November night by huddling next to one of the volcano's scalding steam fissures. Setting out with a blanket, some bags of food and a burro, he would wander the mountains for months on end, knowing that if he fell off a cliff or was eaten by a bear, well, that was part of the quest. High-Tech Hikers.

Muir was an important force in getting the Government to preserve bits and pieces of untamed land by establishing official wilderness areas. But high technology is rapidly ending the possibility of real solitude. Moreover, in the face of advanced mobile technologies, the very idea of wilderness, once one of the themes said to define the American spirit, is vanishing.

Wilderness is supposed to be a place where, compasses notwithstanding, there is always the possibility of getting lost, where one must pit one's wits against the elements to survive. Now the elements barely have a chance. A dazzling array of new technologies, including hand-held global positioning satellite receivers and computerized altimeters make it possible to know where you are within 300 feet. In many otherwise remote places, one can pick up a cellular telephone and call for directions. Soon fleets of communications satellites such as Motorola Corporation's Iridium system will permit one to make a telephone call -- or be beeped -- from anywhere on earth.

"A key reason the wilderness areas were set up was to provide solitude and an escape from technology," said Jay Watson, regional director for the Wilderness Society in California and Nevada. "It diminishes the value of wilderness to the human spirit if you're forever safe."

In the 1950's the sociologist David Riesman wrote in his book "The Lonely Crowd" that the death of community meant that one could be surrounded by people yet still be profoundly alone and isolated. Wireless communications technologies are turning his original vision inside out. With cellular phones and wireless E-mail, one can be physically alone yet still in the midst of a clamoring invisible crowd.

"The community has triumphed over the individual," said Michael Schrage, a research associate at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a technology columnist for The Los Angeles Times. "The idea of the frontier used to be a compelling American metaphor. Now it is irrelevant."

Some weekend mountaineers now seem to consider it an inalienable right to be rescued when they find themselves trapped in some mountain col. Search and rescue teams around the country say they are receiving calls for help on increasingly ubiquitous cellular telephones and walkie-talkies, even from hikers who have momentarily lost their way in the fog.

In Yosemite National Park there have already been a number of cellular telephone rescues. A woman hiking above the rim of the Yosemite Valley lost the trail near dark this summer and called the park search and rescue service. She seemed to be in a panic, and after failing to get her to describe her location, John Dill, a search and rescue officer, sent a helicopter to look for her. He said he was worried that she might walk the wrong direction and fall off a cliff. By listening for the helicopter and telling Mr. Dill in which direction it seemed to be flying, the woman was able to lead the rescuers to her.

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