Crete

I didn’t think that I would end up in Greece under the hot sun, down to my last half-liter of water 4 km away from civilization with my partner and my best friend when I started to read What Technology Wants. It is weird how information seems to flow through my life like water over rock. Enjoying a book turned into further research into the author. That led me to the idea of a walking trip, which, months later, crept up into my imagination when trying to figure out what to do this summer. And so there I was, walking across Crete with my partner and my friend -- what technology wanted was for me to detach and to slow down and to feel the grit of the Earth.

It was just a moment of being uncomfortable, early in the trip, but after so long being inside and on screens, a physical problem felt foreign. Four kilometers is so short, but also just long enough for us tech bros to get nervous. We trudged on and made it back, exhausted and perhaps a bit dehydrated, but so fine and, really, better for it. That’s the interesting thing about nature versus technology obstacles: the human body craves physical exertion and colors it with positive remembrance. The opposite is true with technology: I am addicted and cannot put it down, but once I do, the world finally is revived of its color.

Yet this trip would not have been possible without technology. Because of communication technology, Arjun and I can keep in touch over long distances. Because of the internet, we were able to find a hike in Greece and book it with minimal effort.

I think technology wanted me to log off for long enough to appreciate its beauty again: to reset my relationship with screens as I spent time with nature, the polar opposite of technology but really more like a subverted twin, so that I can come back and use the tools at my disposal to create and live and enjoy more.

Beside me on this trip was, as always, Emma, an outdoors woman. She is built to move. Potential energy is against her nature; she is kinetic. This trip is a perfect encapsulation of our relationship. She is fast to say yes and I am fast to say no. I’ve always pushed back against hiking and she has always thrown out crazy ideas -- like horseback riding in Kyrgyzstan or some wild eight-day trek in Nepal. A walk around Greece was a compromise that fit our relationship, somewhere in the middle.

And there was Arjun, a friend I made by complete and utter chance. We started working together at a company in South Korea, of all places, on the same day. We don’t remember how we became friends, but we are now inseparable, tied by something bigger than happenstance. The first thing he said to me when he landed was, “It’s just me?” Then he laughed and said, “Of course,” and we went on with the trip. The plan was only me sending the Craig Mod and Kevin Kelly article and the dates.

On Crete I walked over red clay, brick-cracked, earth-caked lands, on the edge of a cliff overlooking the deepest blue water as the sky, barren of clouds, showed me its grandeur in full. I trudged over craggy hills as the sun beat down upon me, reminding me of how much I love being alive, looking as far as my eyes could see to find rolling greens and yellows interspersed with lush purple. These were the hills of Greece, welcoming me, taunting me, reintroducing me to the world. I splashed through gorges, with those great-god-gifted rocks, dark and ruddy with age, towering narrowly to either side of me. The only noises were the crunch of boots on gravel, breath leaving lungs, and the wind whispering sweet nothings to the rock or the tree or the goat, the sound of endless erosion as light as can be.

In Crete, I walked 90 kilometers in 5 days.

We -- Emma, Arjun, and I -- flew into Crete and spent the night in Chania before taking a taxi to Palaiochora. There we found our first walk: down the Anidri Gorge for an easy 10.5-kilometer trek. It was in Palaiochora that Arjun had the best gyro of his life in a place that we cannot remember the name of.

From there, we walked to Sougia on what was supposed to be an easy 15-kilometer walk that, leaving at 9 a.m., turned into a scorcher. It included 415 meters of elevation and no stops for water. Emma was sick -- from travel, maybe. I think it was because she had finally taken a vacation: the body knows when it can steal time to really rest. It is interesting that the body spoke and thought that a hike in Greece was a safer place to be sick than behind a screen.

From Sougia, it was 1,000 meters of elevation gain up the Agia Irini Gorge to the Omalos Plateau. This was my favorite walk: the gorge was mostly shaded for the first 3 hours, and then the walk required trekking over the empty hills of Crete, replete with green and pink and purple vegetation. At one point, Arjun, Emma, and I walked for over an hour that we all agreed felt like 5 minutes. This led to Emma explaining to us the definition of Stoke: the brain's way of rewarding us for risk, rhythm, and immersion in the now.

From Omalos, what went up must go down. We found our way down the Samaria Gorge, ending with a stumble through the Iron Gates -- a narrow gap between the cliffs that leads into a flowered and rivered area where nature itself speaks Pan and Dionysus and the Nymphs and the Muses into existence through erosion alone. Here we stopped at Agia Roumeli.

Our last day of hiking was a 15-kilometer trek from Agia Roumeli to Loutro, a walk that felt super easy until kilometer 10: we marched up a full hill with no shade and then scrambled down. Our trip ended in Loutro, a carless town of all white, where we ate a sweaty meal by the seaside involving a shrimp saganaki I will be dreaming of forever.

And the food, my goodness, the food. Crete brought successive best meals ever. Chicken, lamb, shrimp, tzatziki, stuffed tomatoes, zucchini flowers, goat, moussaka. Always fresh. Always with a side of olive oil. Pure. Never too much.

This will not be my last hike -- and I can only see this expanding. More and more and more.

What Technology Wants describes technology as a living thing, an organism working in parallel to humanity. Technology, like the waves and the views and the silence of nature, is not sentient but opinionated, heavy with choice. It changes you -- for better or worse.

Kelly’s chapter on the Amish became sticky during this trek: a brainworm. The Amish live with technology not through instant adoption, but through slow, selected adoption. They ask whether a tool will strengthen or weaken their community.

Being in nature on this little walking trip reminded me that technology is a force as powerful as the sea and the wind and the water. It is a force that deserves reckoning.

Since Crete, I walk more. I put my phone away when I go to the grocery store. I am attempting to spend my nights reading instead of scrolling. I am thinking more about how my relationship with technology can be symbiotic rather than parasitic. I am also more and more intrigued with the thought that nature and technology are converging through us, and that part of life is finding the balance between the worlds we live in, digital and physical, that want to shape us so, so differently.

What Technology Wants was such a good book that I had to learn more about the author. Kevin Kelly is such a clear writer and thinker that once I found the walk-and-talk essay -- one that I recommend anyone read -- I felt no fear in taking his advice. That, as an author, is the goal. It also reminds me of what it feels like to have a good friend: to have no hesitation to go on a quest.

I think I’ll be more adventurous and ready for Nepal. And I think Emma will be more willing to slow down and enjoy something like Greece: this is the beauty of a relationship with multiple poles. This trip felt so very us: friendship, food, conversation, the outdoors. There will be so much more. It is a relationship of abundance and I love how much I get to learn from her and the places in the world I will get to see because we decided to love each other. I love that I get to push her in different ways: to slow down and enjoy the actual walk, not the planning of, not the next thing, but the moment itself.

This was a trip where Arjun and I officially went from great friends to brothers. It was the silence that spoke this truth. 30 or 45 minutes might pass on walks when Arjun, Emma, and I felt no need to utter a word. We were basking in each other’s presence, comfortable enough to allow the world to speak to us as it is. With a lesser friend, I think I would have felt the pressure to keep up the conversation or to check in that he was having a good time. This trip cemented complete trust: the two of us, separate people aligned in a moment.

We are good complements: where I am impulsive, he is calm. Where I am creative, he is strategic. When we write, he brings structure and I bring style. It just sort of melds. It works.

Arjun and I have a running joke in our friendship: anytime we go do anything, anywhere, we smile big and wide and say, “What are the odds?” At the airport in Chania, what were the odds of him, a kid from Delhi, and me, a kid from Texas, meeting at a company in South Korea, becoming friends, and going on a trip to Greece together? Since we know each other so well now, the odds are good and getting better, but they were oh so low.

The odds of anything in life. But getting a friend like Arjun? That’s really, really low.

Crete was special. I have a new rule for living life -- when Kram is in your DMs with a plan he can’t explain in a different country, you should say yes. The process of finding paths, finding yourself, and finding a deeper friendship in hardship. I live for experiences like this with friends and with family, and especially with friends that are now family. To saying yes to unfigured-out plans, to doing hard things, and to many more such experiences with Kram and Emma.

-- Arjun

The irony is that a book about what technology wants sent me into nature to reckon with what I want from technology.