Disconnection in the Mountains and the Great Mennonite Debate

This past weekend I took a hiking trip to the mountains in the neighboring state of Chihuahua. Beautiful forest scenery, streams, rivers with actual flowing water, and no internet signal. Not a single bar.

It didn’t catch me off guard. I brought my iPod Classic in preparation for it, but I will admit it was weird at first. It felt like missing a limb. The feeling slowly went away as the hours passed, though. Things got slower, and the slight uneasiness I felt during the first couple of hours turned into a sensation of calmness, and I was suddenly focusing on the moment.

During the walk down the canyon of Basaseachi Falls National Park, I decided to stay at one of the viewpoints and wait for the rest of the group to go down to the bottom and come back up (I was worried about the hike up to the surface). I ended up waiting for a little past an hour, with nothing to do. I really wished I had brought my pen and notebook, but in retrospect, that was also fine. An hour of boredom ended up being a kind of shock therapy for a brain that’s always looking to fill in the gaps between sources of distraction.

At some point we had a conversation about Mennonites (we were deep in Mennonite country), and I couldn’t just Google the things we didn’t know. In that state, disagreements keep being disagreements, no internet judge to rule any part out. And you know what? That’s perfectly fine. Winning an argument about Mennonites being Christian has zero effect in my life. It. Is. Fine.

During the trip back to 2026, as soon as we got cell signal, the inside of the van was lit by screens. Hundreds of notifications chiming in, hungry for attention.

I kept mine in my backpack, took it out when we stopped for dinner, answered a couple of important messages, and put it back in the backpack.

It was fine.