{"id":1537,"date":"2025-01-11T15:27:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-11T15:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manzodakota.com\/?p=776"},"modified":"2026-06-11T14:26:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T14:26:54","slug":"disconnecting-from-the-world-for-30-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/disconnecting-from-the-world-for-30-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Disconnecting from the world for 30 days"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m very much interested in increasing my international travel experiences, and looking for more adventure in my life. I got off to a good start with a trip to Spain last fall, and I’m about to leave for Mexico City in a few days. But my oldest son is taking the adventure theme to a higher level with his current trip, and there’s a few things I need to wrap my head around with what he’s doing. He just flew to South America where he is taking part in a NOLS<\/a> adventure course, which is described as: “Embark on an unforgettable adventure in the stunning Andes Mountains, where jagged peaks, crystal-clear rivers, and lush coastal rainforests meet. This mountaineering and leadership course in Patagonia will challenge you both physically and mentally as you learn essential wilderness skills while gaining a deeper understanding of your leadership potential.”<\/p>\n

He sent me the picture above – looking out at the mountains he’s about to go climb … he is leaving for his basecamp today, and part of the program includes the concept to be fully immersed in the adventure, meaning: leave your cellphone behind. I love this idea – to unplug and not have the distraction of a small screen in the palm of your hand, but rather to be fully present in your environment and with those joining you on the trip. The NOLS website has a blog post<\/a> that explains their thinking in having their participants unplug, and I love the idea. In this day and age, it almost seems like a very rare luxury to be disconnected from the world for 30 days – no emails, no texts, how nice would that be?<\/p>\n

But as a parent, it’s kind of crazy to think that I’ll have no way to reach my son – or have him give me updates – over the next thirty days while he’s in an environment like the one pictured below (an A.I. generated image to illustrate the setting he’s about to experience). I just have to trust that everything will be fine and when I hear from him a month from now, he’ll be ready to share his stories in fine health at that time. I know, I’m just being an overprotective parent – as he said, “if you don’t hear anything about me, that means everything is fine,” and that’s totally true.<\/p>\n

\"hiking<\/p>\n

If anything, I have an element of envy – the idea of disconnecting from the world for 30 days actually sounds pretty good. I think back to a trip I took in the early 1990s, before there was general public access to the internet, cell phones didn’t exist, and I spent two weeks traveling from New Mexico to Colorado to Utah to Arizona. I had no contact with anyone, other than maybe using a pay phone to check in with my parents, but the idea of two weeks completely independent and beholden to no one is hard to imagine in our current hyper-connected world. I may have to do something like that again sometime soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m very much interested in increasing my international travel experiences, and looking for more adventure in my life. I got off to a good start with a trip to Spain last fall, and I’m about to leave for Mexico City in a few days. But my oldest son is taking the adventure theme to a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[200,516,584,698],"class_list":["post-1537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel-explore","tag-chile","tag-mountain-climbing","tag-pategonia","tag-south-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1537"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3141,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537\/revisions\/3141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}