Cell Phones in the Adirondacks

Our discussion of the backlights of cell phones being used as a replacement for lighters during the Superbowl reminded me of last summer, which I spent up in the Adirondacks, living in a tent, most of the time.  Very few cell phone plans actually get service up in the Adirondacks, unless you're willing to spend an hour climbing a mountain in order to make a call.  So cell phones became useless for us as phones, but my friends and I were able to find one use for them.

One of my friends got a job washing dishes at a hotel up there, and often had to stay long past dinner hours, 11:30 to 12:00, before I had to go pick him up (I was the only one with a car).  Our campsite (well, it was more of a firepit where we were illegally squatting) was half mile hike through dense forest from the car.  We bought a flashlight, but of course, I'd always leave it in the car.  Let me tell you, you haven't experienced true darkness until you're in the middle of the woods in the Adirondacks with no flashlight.  Fortunately, I did usually remember my cell phone, so I'd use the faint light my cell phone provided to find the path again, keep mashing buttons so the backlight would stay on and I wouldn't stumble over any roots, or confront a bear unknowingly (though apparently, you can smell them before you can see them anyway).

I always find using technology in a new way enjoyable: I'm sure the inventor of the cell phone, or whoever came up putting a backlight into the cell phone, did not have my predicament in the woods in mind, but I find the light the cell phone provided immeasurably more useful than using the cell phone for its "purpose" which didn't work in the mountains anyway.  I guess part of the joy is a sense of power over technology: I can reduce the cell phone to a simple flashlight with my absentmindedness in forgetting the actual flashlight, and these unlikely situations I seem to find myself in.