Thanks for sharing!

I think there’s a broader discussion to be had about what “unconfined recreation” and “opportunities for solitude” mean in an age of ubiquitous connectivity.

Unfortunately, that genie left the bottle a long time ago and granted its three wishes to people who aren’t us. Ha!

The Wilderness Act obviously couldn’t have anticipated satellite messaging or direct-to-cell service. A radio signal itself doesn’t leave an imprint on the landscape the way a road or communication tower does. But I’d argue it can leave an imprint on the wilderness experience if it changes our expectations and behaviors. Wilderness Ethics by the Watermans touched on this topic almost 30 years ago. (As a side note, I have revist to that book in my draft folder)

To me, the technology itself is largely neutral. How it changes our relationship with wild places is the more interesting question.

For sure. Starlink is impressive technology. One of the last projects I worked on with the NPS was setting up Starlink at a remote district here in Utah. It’s not overly expensive, it’s reliable, and it works well.

I’d argue that internet connectivity is a utility at this point, much like electricity or running water. If you’re living somewhere full-time, especially hosting a high-profile campground like Zion, having reliable internet is more of a necessity than a luxury.

Having said that, putting so many eggs in the Musk basket gives me pause, too!

Have fun at Zion!

Yes, one of these weekends was on the AT north out of Duncannon, PA–certainly not a wilderness!

Barely 15 years later, i was hiking the AT north out of Penn-Mar Park towards Pine Grove Furnace, and spent a fair part of the hike babysitting my boss over the phone.

Connectivity has its downsides.

DEFINITION OF WILDERNESS
(c) A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.

Good point! The infrastructure question will be interesting to watch.

Exactly!

Those weren’t remote expeditions.

But nobody expected you to have known sooner. You heard it on the radio first.

That baseline is gone now. And what strikes me is that it went without any real collective decision about whether we wanted it to. The technology arrived, the expectation followed, and opting out became its own statement rather than the default.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

The attention issue may prove to be the larger challenge. It’s not necessarily that someone expects an immediate response. It’s that the same device carrying your map, camera, and emergency communications is also carrying texts, emails, group chats, and all the other noise of everyday life. That convergence is harder to opt out of than a single-purpose tool.

PLBs increasingly serve a different purpose than satellite messengers rather than competing with them. Two-way communication offers clear advantages for most users. PLBs still make sense for edge cases : mountaineering, very cold conditions, situations where a simple and highly reliable distress beacon is preferred over a subscription device that’s not as robust..

My concern is less about the technology itself and more about how expectations and social norms evolve around it. Once connectivity becomes ubiquitous, the pressure to remain connected tends to follow… and that pressure rarely stops at employers.

The benefits of 2 way comms (i.e. Garmin inReach) over a PLB seem pretty clear to me. Better communication can help rescuers assess a situation, prioritize resources, and avoid unnecessary responses.

You raise a great question: Does the ability to communicate automatically create an obligation to communicate?

I personally believe people still have the option to choose how much they communicate, even when the technology is available. For me, the only people who know how to reach me are my emergency contacts. They know to contact me if there’s something important, such as a fire in the area or a family emergency. I want that capability. If my dad had a heart attack, I’d want to know and head home. I can always do another trip.

(If an employer expects responses from the backcountry, that sounds more like a workplace culture problem than a technology problem.)

I can definitely see satellite messaging moving to phones over time. That said, after using both in 2026, I still find it much easier to send and receive messages with an inReach than with a mobile phone using satellite messaging.

That said, I do think there will be a growing attention issue as satellite connectivity becomes integrated into phones. The problem isn’t necessarily that someone expects a reply. It’s that your attention gets pulled back into everyday life by trivial texts, emails, notifications, and group chats that never would have reached you before. To me, that’s a more significant challenge than the ability to communicate itself.