Apple just made it safer — or even more difficult — to get away from it all

Normally I get about as excited over new operating-system updates as I do over a preacher’s new sermon on Ecclesiastes.

But when Apple announced that coming this fall hikers will be able to send text messages from the wilderness, well, that’s something I can use.

As a bit of context, I live in a spot that has fewer bars than a Morman cruise ship and less service than a health-insurance call center.

This is by design. Cell towers are thought to destroy the aesthetic of a place that prides itself on its wilderness, so if cell towers are allowed at all, communication companies are required to disguise them in ways that border on the bizarre.

One, they have to be below a ridgeline so they don’t stick out. But this also means they don’t work well, not beyond a limited acreage of dense forest. So if you are a bear with Verizon, you are in luck.

Second, they have to be disguised in some way, either hidden on historic fire towers or shaped like trees. The “trees” by themselves are not always that convincing, and are known as Frankenpines — a reference to the hardware that bristles out from beneath the fake needles much like a sheep hide draped over a wolf.

This problem is solved — I am not kidding — by requiring the cell phone company to build an extra, non-operative cell tower disguised as pine next to the “real” artificial pine. So you have a fake tower disguised as a fake pine, if that makes sense. This decoy pine is generally shorter than the Frankenpine, but taller than the native forest. This, it is thought, makes the taller tower blend in better, and less noticeable to a  casual glance.

I wonder how civilization will look back at this 200 years from now — they will assuredly laugh at us for disguising communications equipment as pine trees the way we laugh at medieval physicians for treating depression with liquid mercury.

So the point of all this is that you can’t call or text in the average town, much less in the backcountry. But wilderness hiking — which I spend a lot of time doing —  is notoriously variable, particularly off-trail, engaged in the hillbilly-sounding sport of bushwhacking.

There, you often run into obstacles like cliffs or wetlands or dense thickets of spruce that can slow your progress to a crawl and seriously delay your planned arrival time back at home.

So it will obviously be a serious advantage to be able to shoot a quick text back home saying everything is fine, but you’ll be later than you thought.

Still, as convenient as this will be, I can’t help but feel conflicted, viz., you enter the wilderness for the specific reason of getting away from technology. And here it is, following at your heels like a blind dog.

When Jim Bridger was out exploring the Wild West, he could hardly shoot a text to his wife when he found a mountain pass choked with snow: “Just put dinner in the oven honey, I’ll be running about three months late.”

But more disturbingly, there will now be no place on earth where they can’t find you. Just when you sit down on a mossy ledge beside a wild scenic river four miles from the nearest road, and a deer and her fawn stop on the far side for a drink, you get a text: “I know it’s your day off Phil, but the Carsons need their loan documents by the end of the day.”

Living in a land without texts can be an inconvenience, sure, but it is also a bulletproof and socially accepted excuse:

“I was really counting on you to take the cheerleading team to McDonald’s, didn’t you get my text?”

“Sorry, I didn’t have any service yesterday.”

“Oh, OK, gotcha.”

Now, if a text message falls in the forest, you can’t pretend it didn’t make a sound.

How depressing.

When tracking apps don't want to track you, does it mean you're officially not a threat?

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: New Apple system keeps you communicating — even from the wilderness