i recently spent a long, long day in a hospital
waiting lobby

the lobby was large; so large that it had two
massive high definition TVs hanging from its walls

one was set CNN's Super Tuesday Election
Coverage; the other showed high def DVD's of
nature scenes -

beautiful scenes of snow falling on pine trees,
water flowing over mossy rocks and birds-eye
panoramas of million-acre national parks

throughout that long day of mind-numbing waiting,
i found myself turning away from the screen images
of Wolf Blitzer, Barack Obama and talking heads

and turning toward the screen that mesmerized me
with falling snow, flying birds and expansive skies

many times that day i resolved that if i ever got out
of that waiting lobby, i would go out and buy a high-
definition TV, a really large one

yes, i would buy that TV, watch it and be happy

but, as the 13-hour wait dragged on, a thought
occurred to me -

it struck me as odd that i would be content to
go out and spend big bucks on a machine that
would flash two-dimensional images before my eyes

content with images, when i could easily go out,
in the real world, the three-dimensional world,
and surround myself with real birds, water, smells,
breezes, and skies -

real skies with inconceivably large objects i could
view from distances of trillions of miles

but although i could easily surround myself with all
this real world wonder by visiting nearby State and
National Parks,

i was more likely to buy a high def, settle for two
dimensional facsimiles of nature, and be content

and i would not be unique in making this choice,
consider, for example, this finding

Visits to national parks peaked in 1987 and dropped 23 percent by 2006, while hiking on the Appalachian Trial peaked in 2000 and was down 18 percent by 2005.
- link

a finding from a study that,

tracked the decline in National Parks visits, and correlated them with a number of factors, including rising fuel prices and increases in Internet use and media consumption. The authors concluded that the trends represented a move away from appreciation of the outdoors, and termed its replacement "videophilia."
- link

what are the implications of this trend for 21st-
century society?

we are replacing National Parks with high-def DVD's
and person-to-person contact with online social
networking - what else will we replace?

what does this say about us?

what will be become?