The world was looking for Fred Ramsdell after he won the Nobel Prize for work he did 25 years ago, figuring out how the body’s immune system avoids attacking its own cells.
But Ramsdell was so far off the grid in the wilds of Wyoming, that even the employees at his company, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, couldn’t reach him. Instead, they were telling everyone, Hey, sorry, he’s out there living his best life, off-the-grid, in the Wyoming wilderness, 8,000 feet above sea level.
Ramsdell didn’t find out anything was afoot until he was headed out of Wyoming to Montana, for the last night of a three-and-a-half-week backpacking vacation. He and his wife had stopped briefly in Yellowstone National Park. Ramsdell was walking their dogs, according to an interview with the Nobel Prize Committee, while his wife was checking cell phone messages.
Suddenly, Ramsdell heard his wife inside their car, yelling out, “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Ramsdell’s first thought was that it was grizzly bears his wife was yelling about, not Nobel Prizes. They’d just seen all manner of wildlife on their way through the park — moose, antelope, elk — and this was, after all, grizzly country.
When he looked around, though, he didn’t see any bears anywhere, or any other reason to shriek. That left him puzzled. What on earth was his wife so excited about?
She jumped out of the car, still excited, and said, “You won the Nobel Prize!”
“I did not,” he told her.
“Yes, you did,” she shot back. “I have 200 text messages that say you won the Nobel Prize.”
At that point, Ramsdell and his wife still had to drive at least another hour before they could get decent cell service and Wi-Fi to plug back in and start making phone calls about his once-in-a-lifetime award. He won the prize for medicine, alongside researchers Mary Brunkow of Seattle and Shimon Sakaguchi of Japan.
It’s hard to get more unplugged from modern life than Ramsdell was. And his story highlights one of the things that Wyomingites love about their state. There’s nowhere better to get away from it all — even if that includes the Nobel Prize Committee.
“That’s just a beautiful story,” Wyoming outdoorsman and fly-fishing guide Paul Ulrich told Cowboy State Daily. “Wyoming is one of the last, vast, great places where you can actually do that. And it’s something that I embrace all the time, so I’m very happy Fred embraced it as well.”
Ulrich, however, did have one little bone to pick with Ramsdell.
“Nothing cool like that has ever happened to me when I’m out of cell phone range,” he said, chuckling a little bit. “I typically come back to a shitload of chores and too many emails, and, inevitably, something broken on the house that I have to fix.”
The Digital Detox
Ramsdell was in Wyoming for a three-and-a-half-week break from all things modern, and by extension, all things digital. Whenever Ramsdell goes on a family trip, it’s a rule. He switches his cell phone to airplane mode and goes cold turkey from the modern world.
There’s a name for that in this modern society so full of electronic gadgets and gizmos. It’s called a digital detox, and lots of people swear by them, from social media influencers to regular Janes and Joes.
“It just resets your entire kind of neurocognitive baseline,” Thermopolis resident Tristan Scott told Cowboy State Daily. “I would say, unfortunately, we get so much of our stimulation and reward and dopamine from devices now.”
In fact, Scott moved to Wyoming so he could unplug more often, instead of just when he’s on vacation or going hunting. He also started a company called Daylight Computer Company, which features human-friendly digital devices whose screens behave more like paper.
No more flickering screen headaches, and no more blue-light driven sleepless nights.
This summer, Daylight Computer gained significant exposure when the tablet was featured on the wildly popular “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
Scott’s digital detox is usually in the mountains of Wyoming as well, in a place where he knows he will get “absolutely no service.”
That’s when he can really feel the difference right down to the marrow of his bones.
“It resets your baseline, so that the majority of your stimulation, or all of it in the detox period, comes from your environment instead of a singular object, so it’s more dispersed,” he said. “And I think that’s more consistent with what our biology is really programmed to do, and, overall, you’ll have a better just kind of emotional, energetic regulation ability.”
Getting rid of that edge he normally experiences, which comes from waiting for the next ping or the next notification, feels like bliss.
Not Just Yellowstone
Fortunately for residents, Wyoming offers lots of places from one corner of the state to the next that are perfect for a digital detox, Wyoming Office of Tourism Piper Singer told Cowboy State Daily, adding that she was thrilled when she heard the story about Ramsdell.
“Only in Wyoming can the news of a Nobel Prize take a backseat to the beauty of the mountains,” she said. “When even the world’s top scientists lose cell service because they’re too busy exploring, you know you’re in a place worth unplugging for.”
Scott agreed that Wyoming has many places to unplug besides just Yellowstone. One of his favorites is the Upper Green River, but he also loves climbing in Lander and enjoys the Southern Winds as well.
“There’s a lot of great places in Wyoming,” he said. “The Bighorns, the Tetons. But the ones where I can summit a mountain or be on a ridge and know that I’m looking out and there’s nobody for miles — those are really special.”
Three Weeks Isn’t Enough
A digital detox shouldn’t be confined to just three or so weeks of the year, though, Ulrich suggested, adding that he hopes that Ramsdell gets to unplug more than just three weeks.
“We should be engaging the natural world one hell of a lot more than we’re engaging the digital world,” Ulrich said. “We should be spending three weeks a year online, instead of the other way around. It should be flipped.”
That’s the nature of the world today, though, Ulrich and Scott both acknowledged.
“It’s a byproduct of the world we live in,” Scott said. “So I think what we’re trying to do at Daylight, is just navigate. Find that middle ground. We’re obviously not going to go back to no technology, no wireless technology. But so what’s the solution to have it not be so dehumanizing?”
Most people, he added, are looking at screens for 80% of their day, unless they’re lucky enough to have a physical job, where screen time is minimal.
“There’s no separation any more between work and home,” he said. “There’s no separation when you’re reachable and when you’re not. And I think that’s another thing that just keeps our nervous system really activated.”
That’s not good for sleep, it’s not good for the immune system, and it’s not good for creativity, he added.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.