Snowbirds visiting southern New Mexico are showing up on the desert trails where I run. I’ve noticed some of them are still plugged in. Sitting on a bench staring down into a phone. Walking with earbuds in or with music playing aloud. Sitting on a rock under a juniper tree with talk radio crushing the silence.
Their avoidance of the unbroken experience of nature makes me pay more attention to it. On a cloudless blue day, it was so quiet I could detect the soft sound of the breeze across my ears and the flutter of a quail taking flight. After a wonderfully long and heavy rain, the sandscape was dramatically repainted in soft, curving streaks of beige and brown where new rivulets had run to the lake. There was even a little mud. Not to mention deer tracks, a roadrunner, and a jackrabbit.
On a warm day, I even spied a few snake tracks. They like the sun as much the human visitors do.
Given the choice to disconnect from something, I’d choose the phone.
Amber Foxx Mysteries 
The phone really is the hardest to disconnect.
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Apparently, it is. I’ve never gotten a smart phone, so I don’t spend much time with my “dumb” phone. But my college students used to struggle with the simple requirement to not use their phones during class.
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