Hello readers! I wanted to throw up an introduction of myself and the blog in case anyone goes reading post by post and is curious.

My name is Gracie, and I’ll be the primary writer for this blog. I’m a graduate research assistant funded through the Technology on the Trail initiative through Virginia Tech’s ICAT (see the About the Initiative for more info on that). My master’s thesis will be poking its nose into this area as well. So, this blog explores some combination of my research work, my personal interests, and an intention to add some useful if informal thoughts to discussions about technology and the great outdoors.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a Computer Science student (Human-Computer Interaction) who spends an inordinate amount of time online, so my thoughts will be quite biased. For a good chunk of my life, a healthy proportion of my close friendships have been long distance through the Internet. But I’ve seen my share of how unhealthy and detrimental the Internet can be, too. Mostly, I want to speak from a middle ground with sympathies for why people feel pressured to be constantly connected to technology.

So far, the idea for this blog is to post research ideas, responses to material I’ve read, and information about trails and hiking. I tend to ramble in writing, so I’ll try to keep posts well organized. We welcome anyone getting in touch with us for whatever reason that might come to mind.