Wilderness WiFi

The state of Oregon has installed WiFi at the Multnomah Falls rest stop in the Columbia River Gorge, as well as six other locations throughout the state.

"Someone could take their picture of the falls, sit down here and download it to their laptop and e-mail it to their grandmother," says Craig Tutor, development and marketing manager for the Oregon Travel Information Council.

Well, maybe, I guess, if you have to get your picture there nearly instanteously. Is that really what anyone has to do?

Cost is $1.99 for 20 minutes, for full access to the Web ($4/day, $8/wk, $30/mth).

I'm conflicted about this. I can see it as useful for RVs and truckers, and if I was in a RV long-term I'd probably always be on the lookout for WiFi hotspots. But somehow it seems unnecessary and ill-suited for places of nature.

"It's awful," says Scott Silver of Bend, who, as director of the nonprofit Wild Wilderness, fights the commercialization of the great outdoors. "It takes the whole idea of adventure out of travel, and it replaces it with being on a hidden track just like you are on a ride in Disneyland.

"The travel industry wants to make sure that everybody who travels needs to be constantly connected, and connected to the opportunity to make purchases."

On the other hand, when I backpacked on the Appalachian Trail ten years ago, I was good friends with "Download," a guy who carried a small PDA and which he used to send accounts of our days via email, which someone then uploaded to the Web. It was fun, and we even met people who knew us just because they'd been following our journey. So I'm not completely opposed to mixing technology with nature. I suppose in another 10 years it will be so ubiquitious that it won't matter anyway. But if someone pulls out a laptop in the middle of the wilderness...something will have been lost forever.