Life without a smartphone…. Reflections on a quiet 2025

A message from Nature's Apprentice facilitator Emily Coats….

Dear world,

This year I finally made it happen - the long awaited dream of going bush for up to a year, and letting the dirt, rain and silence soak into my skin. 

One of my many intentions for the year, along with building my own shelter and practising skills like fire-by-friction, was to go entirely without a smartphone. What would happen to my brain? What new and forgotten faculties would wake up?

Setting off with an outdated road atlas and an assortment of google maps printouts, I took great satisfaction in following my nose, and the kindness of strangers, to public libraries, campsites and friends' houses, eventually arriving at my mid-north NSW destination. 

While I didn't manage the entire year without a smartphone, my relationship with technology did completely change. I could no longer rely on google as I rarely had signal – I had to rely on myself!

One of the biggest joys of living a less phone-driven life was deepening into the ancient skills of observation, awareness and intuition – capacities I see atrophying in myself and others as we rarely actually use them. Another was the different quality of the relationships I formed when interacting with the world directly, without the intermediary of the phone. Hours spent mimicking fan-tailed cuckoos has left their songs etched in my heart. While not as 'accurate' as a recording, when I hear one now I feel like we really know each other.

So the idea emerged to offer others the opportunity to develop deep and personal connections to nature, and their own intuition, by ditching the phone for a couple of hours a week. Earth Time is a weekly nature connection program I've been running for the last two years and next term it's all about the joy of being unplugged from technology. Join me on Monday afternoons in February, in Darebin Parklands, Melbourne, to develop ancestral awareness skills, replace reliance on apps, and engage more mindfully with technology.

Early bird closes Dec 24th. It could even be a gift for a loved one?

Wildly,

Emily