New West Living

Living and Loving in the Wild, Wired West

By Tonya Poole, 2-23-06

This weekend I packed my teenage son in the truck and drove down from Crestone to central New Mexico to his girlfriend’s birthday party in the tiny town of Torreon. Long distance relationships among adults aren’t terribly uncommon – but for in-the-moment, in-your-face teens to whom hanging out, image and attention are of paramount importance? Seems like it's becoming increasingly common, despite the drawbacks, and I blame it on the romance of technology: email, instant messaging, web cams, digital photos, blogs and the occasional steal-away on a sympathetic parent’s cell phone (or, for some more privileged than mine, their own).

Even as recently as 15 or 20 years ago, most anybody in Crestone or Torreon, both with populations under 500 and both an hour’s drive from the nearest metro area, had challenges keeping in regular contact with, let alone being in love with, anyone more than a few miles out of town. And for those who did find love close to home, moving away often meant leaving it behind, or, at the very least, promises of undying devotion across the miles, followed by an exchange of love letters than inevitably dwindled out over time during the growing-apart process. Out of sight, I’m afraid the saying goes, out of mind.

But personal communication technologies have quickly cropped geographies, even in the great wide and rural west. Shane and I, too – we met and fell in love thanks to a three-day conversation about road trips and aurora borealis in an online forum – are products of its geeky revolution. Through well-worn cell phone headphones, email, instant messaging and our trusty digital cameras, we took one another everywhere we went and shared everything we experienced, despite the distance of 250 miles, and later, more than 1200, until he left the Bay Area two years later to join me in New Mexico. So when my son Ryan and his girlfriend said their goodbyes in New Mexico last year before we set off for Colorado, resolving to keep love going over the miles, who was I to interfere?

And they’ve done it. Almost six months later, now, and they’re having more contact and interaction now via the telephone, instant messaging, email and blog communities like MySpace.com than they did before we left. Mailing each other occasional care packages has become a cute, even if impossibly old-fashioned in their world, way to inject a little necessary tangibility into an otherwise virtual relationship. And while trips to see one another since the move have been few and far between, his determination to travel the ten hours round-trip to spend two short hours at her birthday party last weekend sent shrills and gasps and swoons through her circle of teenage girl friends who are now, of course, off and busy planning a storybook wedding for them.

Ahhh, de laptop l’amour.

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that admitting “we met online� was considered to be the fate of geeks and ‘losers’, but today the paradigm of love and locality has shifted and everyone from athletes to ranchers to lawyers to artists are doing it – making eyes, or rather, iconic smiley faces, at people across states, and in some cases, across oceans. And many of those with more traditional love stories have embraced technology to enhance and improve their relationships. Farmers and ranchers, often gone from sun up to sun down, are carrying cell phones to call their spouses from 120 acres away for a few afternoon �I love yous�. Salespeople and other professionals on the road are pulling web cams out of their briefcases to spend the evening with spouses and kids back at home. Lovers normally separated for eight or more hours a day at work are using always-on instant messaging at their desks to replicate the feeling of being in the same room together.

And it keeps on growing, each new generation of technologies bringing us closer and closer together to the ones we love, or want to, and taking the ability to share our lives to new levels, in a time when schedules and external demands keep us physically away from one another more and more often.

Shane and I used to think we were pretty clever and pioneering back then, when nobody else was watching the same movie together at the theaters, very quietly, over a staticy cell phone connection… or picking out dishes and curtains for the new house through exchanged links in an instant messaging program more than a thousand miles apart. But we’ve since been shown up – as the options for remote communication today have sped past the rickety and archaic tools we used five or six years ago.

I’m not sure if the idea that we as an expansive region can become closer through technology means that we’ve simultaneously abandoned our ability to be closer through our own local relationships – and that’s a conversation for another day. But I do know this much: Not to be outdone, Shane and I are dusting off and plugging into the next generation of communication technologies to win our spot back when we web cast our rural wedding fiesta live around the world.

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