No Phone, No Problem
By Rachel Pelletier & Roy Duffy
September 30, 2024
In the town of Peru, New York, there’s a small slice of beach scattered with pebbles and coarse sand, overlooking the beautiful expanse of Lake Champlain. Here, a group of Arcadians sit by the water’s edge, taking in the view of the Green Mountains of Vermont that line the horizon. Close by, a few more bask in the sun with hats covering their eyes in the hopes of a quick afternoon nap. Farther back from the water, perched on a fallen willow tree, a couple of folks share stories and laughter. Those that prefer to keep moving skip rocks across the water or scour the shore for sea glass. To an onlooker, this may seem like a typical twenty-first century group hangout. But further observation reveals a key difference: the group seems particularly in tune with their surroundings and engaged in conversation. Suddenly, the difference is obvious: there’s not a single glowing screen of a phone to be seen.
This moment at the beach came after a Saturday field trip to tour some local farms in the area. To relax and unwind following the tours, Assistant Director Nate Trachte took us to one of his favorite spots on the lake. There, we spent a few slow hours lounging and chatting with one another without a screen in sight.
A key feature of the Adirondack Semester program is the absence of certain technologies. While the yurt village still intentionally utilizes advanced technologies such as solar power and our composting toilet system, as a community we avoid cellphone and computer use. While this tech-free lifestyle takes some getting used to and might seem quite strange outside of the yurt village, it has become a normal aspect of life for us at Arcadia.
When asked about the benefits of this lifestyle, Director Jacob McCoola shared that he believes living without phones and computers allows students on the Adirondack Semester to be more in-touch with the community, environment, and themselves. Jake also explained that the constant use of devices can often cause people to focus on the idea of a particular moment rather than the moment itself.
Jake works to incorporate the practice of remaining present into his class “Knowing Nature,” where students are assigned weekly sit-spots to complete. A sit-spot involves finding an area in nature where one can sit undisturbed by human influence and just observe the natural world around them. Along with other benefits, this practice helps to raise our awareness of the natural spaces around us and the beings that inhabit them. Assignments like these align with our quest as Arcadians to practice remaining present, just as our lack of devices enable us to do the same.
The absence of cellphones and computers impacts the ways in which we spend our time outside of class as well. For example, on a typical Arcadian Friday afternoon, we finish Jake’s class around 4:00 p.m. From there, we scatter, making the best of our two-and-a-half unscheduled hours before dinner. A hacky sack is frequently pulled from the pocket of a dirty pair of Carhartts. A group quickly forms to practice the game that we are having more and more fun with as our skill develops. A few of us who don’t join the hacky-sack circle may head off to hang in a hammock or to the front dock, where our Sunfish sailboats float on cinderblock moorings. To retrieve the boats, we must wade out to them and bring them back to the dock for boarding. The squeals from the sailors as they maneuver the Sunfish to retrieve a hat stolen by the wind can be heard by two Arcadians who sit side-by-side sharing the earbuds of a CD player and tying friendship bracelets. At Arcadia, no music is played out loud, and with no phones to plug our earbuds into, music that we don’t make ourselves comes through a CD player.
These activities that we take part in after class are intentional, creative, and oftentimes adventurous. When asked about the impacts of not having a phone, fellow Arcadian Ella Pecor shared her thoughts: “Instead of wasting time on my phone, I’m doing things that actually make me happy.” Removing time spent scrolling on socials or watching television frees up time to play games that we’ve missed so dearly from childhood, try new things like sailing, and learn new skills like making bracelets. Not having an endless supply of music at the touch of our fingers makes us appreciate and savor the songs that we are able to listen to here. And, with no excuse to stay in the confines of a building to shield a screen from the glare of the sun, we have the freedom to escape into the outdoors and be immersed in nature.
Not only does the lack of cellphones influence how we use our free time, but it also impacts the ways in which we learn. No phones or computers means no Google, so spellcheck consists of pulling out the dictionary, and any research must be done using the many books held within our classroom yurt. All assignments must be handwritten, and physical copies handed directly to our professors.
One particularly tricky assignment that forced us to practice our resourcefulness came in the form of a RAD plan. RAD stands for “route and description,” which each group of Arcadians was required to compose for the upcoming seven-day backpacking trip. Without access to trail finder apps and blog reviews about hikes in the High Peaks, we turned to good old maps and trail books. Planning our routes required careful studying of the maps to decipher potential routes, compute elevation gains and losses, and determine mileage. When combined with reading through the trail guides, this task proved to be a lengthy process that kept Arcadians up far past quiet hours but helped us sleep soundly, feeling proud and capable for successfully completing our assignment without the help of our devices.
As Arcadian Riley Gale expressed, “There were lots of times where I wished I could just look things up, but I appreciated that I didn’t have that ability because it forced me to be resourceful, and that’s a good skill to have.” The ability to use your available resources without always relying on the knowledge of others is an incredibly powerful skill to possess and one that we are lucky to be able to practice every day through living and learning at Arcadia.
Yet another benefit of limiting the use of technology at Arcadia is an improved ability to foster connections within our community. All too often in our lives outside of Arcadia, we find ourselves distracted by our devices, forgetting to pay attention to the people around us. At times we may share amusement over these devices with others, but even then, we tend not to rely on ourselves for entertainment. Dinner at Arcadia has quite a different dynamic. Without reliance on social media or television, our dinner table is filled with colorful stories, playful banter, and contagious laughter. Through these stories and jokes, we are able to learn about each other and connect in ways that are stifled by the dominating presence of cell phones in most areas of modern life. Arcadian Clara Locke said, “When you can’t distract yourself with Instagram or TikTok or television, you bond a lot more with the people around you because they are your entertainment.” After giving up the technology that we have become so reliant on to keep us entertained, it is incredibly refreshing and valuable to relearn how to get that from ourselves and each other.
As night falls over Lake Massawepie, the daytime critters of the forest cozy up in their homes, and nearby in the yurt village, the Arcadians cozy up in the kitchen. They spend their final hours before bed hunched over a chessboard deliberating their next move, writing letters, listening to CDs, and laughing between yawns. Fellow Arcadian Keegan Leboffe will grab his guitar and lightly strum, spurring a soft chorus of singing from the rest of the group. This is what living simply looks like. Without cellphones, we check our watches for the time, Nate for the weather, and the Tupper Lake Library computers for news every other Thursday. Free from the constant grip of our devices, we can laugh loudly, breathe easily, and live fully.
