"Before the Web, Hearts Grew Silent"

This morning, while looking for something to post, I came across a 'Modern Love' NYT essay/story of a guy recalling a chance meeting with a woman before the time of the web.

In the summer of 1991, without social networks to tether us, I felt such heart-bursting longing for a woman I loved that I traveled across two countries and an ocean to make sure she would not wander out of my life. It was only in her absence, in a total vacuum away from her, that I was able to appreciate the depth of love I felt.

We met in March while I was still in college. She had recently graduated and was knocking around Peoria, Ill., her hometown, figuring out her next step. After two chance meetings, we began going out. Before long, we were rarely apart.

This was the old-fashioned way of falling in love: all of our attentions were on each other. We spent less time with our friends, who could not track the electronic footprints of our relationship. We didn’t have cellphones buzzing every five minutes, distracting us with nonessential chatter. Neither of us was tap-tap-tapping away, eyes downward, communicating with other people during meals.

A chance meeting, which would have been altered, perhaps less romantically so, had it not been for the fact that the encounter took place before the invention of web.

Last night, Bags made this little announcement...

A very rare cosmic event will be happening soon: bagoh20 will have a date. Yes, of course it's a woman, smart ass. Anyway, it's a hiking-with-our-dogs date. So today I went into the mountains to scope out a good spot. Great mountains, with cascading mountain streams, waterfalls, beautiful woodlands and meadows. The dogs love that stuff. They start getting all crazy miles before we get there, when they can smell the woods.

Bags goes on to describe deteriorated trails with garbage and human waste. Deterioration I partly blame on the world wide web.