Technology in the Woods

Yesterday I went to another Master Naturalist meeting.  The topic was "Technology in the Woods."  I didn't think it sounded that exciting but I went anyway because the people there energize and inspire me. I was wrong.  The topic wasn't boring at all. Our speaker, the naturalist from Wild River State Park, gave a spectacular presentation on the topic.  In the past, the woods have been a place to get away from it all; away from the phones and the problems of the world.  Times have changed.  To get our nature deprived children into the woods to appreciate nature, we have had to compromise.  Now we encourage them to bring their phones, their IPADs and their gps (global positioning devices) with them into the woods.  Geocaching is a huge craze.  You can log onto geocache.com, sign up, and learn all about this high tech treasure hunt.  State parks offer cards inside each cache (hidden treasure).  If you get 20 cards, you get a coin.  For each set of 20 cards, you get another coin. If you get a card from all 72 state parks, there is another prize.  Kids love it.  Adults are getting hooked too. State parks offer the gps devices at no charge so this would be an inexpensive way to introduce kids to nature.  The cache's are strategically placed to bring the kids to the most interesting spots.  Wild River state park is taking technology a step further and putting quick recovery codes (QRC's) on signs.  You take a picture of the code with your smart phone or IPAD and you are brought to a website that will tell you ALL ABOUT the nature in front of you and will include links to other pages if you want to know more.  It's amazing.  But to tell the truth, if I was to see a QRC on a stump in the boundary waters, I would be a little disappointed.  That is just me.