January - Forests & Digital Spaces

I sometimes think about what affect I might have on the digital environment. That is to say, some abstracted idea of a “digital environment,” like a shadowy, overgrown forest floor of direct messages, comments, stories. It’s teeming with life down here, with pieces and parts building on themselves and striving to simply continue to exist, to not need building upon. 

I think there’s room for me here; at least, I know I could make room if I wanted, without pushing anyone or anything out. If I’m being honest, most of what’s around me might not even notice I’m here. I’ve never been able to pin down if that’s a comfort or a cause for concern - the vast, impersonal indifference of the forest. The internet, that is. 

But I know I’ve left my share of marks around me. A fallen branch, snapped in two, a stone carelessly pulled from its place in the soil. A crumbly trail of half-drafted emails, a whole rotting log filled with stories deleted seconds after posting. I can’t help but create an insistent space with myself, with where I’ve been. 

It’s pretty often that I wonder what it would feel like to move away from that teeming forest floor, all of its incessant noise of life and movement, always movement. To rise to some canopy and see the sun and be reminded of fresh wind, to know that there’s life up here and it’s real and tangible and iridescent in a way that doesn’t call for blue light glasses. Up there I could lose sight of the detritus below, sway gently and feel more like myself. 

I’d miss things, though. I’d miss a news story, a joke, an impossibly small zoo animal. I almost missed pictures from an old friend’s wedding last week - they both looked happy and beautiful and a little self-conscious.

This digital, social forest floor is filled to bursting with the same life, the same intention, the same veracity as everything outside and above it. I don’t know if removing myself is the right choice - and I want to make the “right” choice. It’s difficult to stumble upon any guiding moral principles in a damp and oblivious underbrush. Ask a starving fox or a centuries-old Ponderosa if it's in the "right" place; ask a programmer at Meta the same thing. Nevertheless, I feel some pervasive need to be "good."

Maybe that “good” stems largely from minimizing my own impact - our impact - on the spaces around us. I want to be recognized, to be myself and be known, but there’s a handful of stones behind me that might’ve always remained comfortable and unobtrusive in the earth if not for my aimless feet. Leave no trace, right? Active participation in a social media environment seems to only make things worse. I could observe, let the goings-on go on, keep myself informed. I wouldn’t miss anything, and I myself wouldn’t be anything to miss. 

Removal seems simple enough. But, on some level, we’ve created an environment that we’ll always need. We’ve forgotten, or simply never want to remember, the unique realities and challenges of a life independent of digital spaces. There’s a necessity to it. There’s a bashful “I know it’s bad, but…” that gets better with practice. How else do we share ourselves and the things we do? When our existence, our livelihood, our vitality is built upon a recognition of our unique space on this forest floor, what good is it to remove yourself? 

And maybe it’s all about connection. A walk in the woods to remind ourselves that we’re a part of something always changing, that we’re alone in our little spaces but we can see countless others alone in their space as well. And there’s an immediacy to it. Life is happening now, down here, it’s always happening, here are your friends and here’s a space for you and it has so much color to it. And you can see the sun through the trees above you; maybe it’s brighter up there, but maybe it’s too bright, and the way the light filters through the trees down here feels as perfect as you could imagine it. 

But it’s been getting dark again, in this overgrown and decaying soil. The light is failing and my eyes can only make out so much. Shadows moving in the distance, twigs snapping. There’s something perceptibly evil, inhuman - or maybe confusingly, frighteningly human. It’s real and insistent and oppressive. Or it could be a trick of my eyes and the low light. An overactive mind in a shadowy space with nothing to do but frighten itself. If these dangers aren’t real, how much of a difference would that make? And if they aren’t real now, is it just a matter of time before they are, before I’m face-to-face with the immediacy of catastrophe I’ve only ever observed passively, with weary sighs behind a screen? 

I can be just an observer here, I can stand quiet and still and let some stale breeze wash over me, but to participate in this ecosystem is to participate indiscriminately. A pine cannot choose its surroundings, the life-and-death struggles that play out on its roots, the advance of insatiable beetles who make its own skin toxic and unrecognizable. I cannot choose to take part in a media-saturated environment without vitriol, without misinformation, without the broadcast of death and destruction or the commodification of my attention span. 

It seems the sun set on this forest floor a while ago. The sky’s darkening and closing in and I’m not sure I remember well enough the meandering trail behind me. I’ll be here for a while, where it gets cold at night in a way that seems barren and unfeeling. But I’m grateful for the space that I have. For where I am, and the life around me. There’s some idea of a distant morning on the way; not in an optimistic, naive and dismissive sense, but as a simple matter of fact. I’ll stay here in what space I have for myself and for those next to me, try to be good and love the cold earth beneath my feet.