“Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

placed solid, by hands

In choice of place, set

Before the body of the mind

in space and time…” — Gary Snyder, “Riprap”

Have you ever become so engrossed in an activity that you lost yourself in it? Time was no longer a concern. In fact, there were no other concerns aside from the task at hand. How often does this happen in our daily lives?

I came across the concept of “flow” or the “flow state” in my reading this week and it gave me pause. How often in our hyper-connected lives do we become so immersed in an undertaking that we forget everything else?

My first encounter with the flow concept came in a Fortune Magazine article by Camile Preston entitled “5 ways to find your Zen at work.” According to Preston, “There is absolutely nothing like flow, which is that energized, hyper-focused state that you fall in when you are completely absorbed in whatever you’re doing.”

In describing the state, Preston writes, “Call it flow, peak performance, or being in the zone. It’s when we work and live at our absolute best.” The idea of working and living at my “absolute best” kept running through my mind all week as I pondered the endeavors that most often place me in a state of total focus.

The Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is credited with first noting the concept of flow. According to Preston, Csikszentmihalyi believed “that flow is the ultimate state of happiness” and that you know that you are “in flow when the work is effortless” and you are “completely immersed and engaged in what you are doing.”

During these pursuits, time flies and is no longer a concern. I can think of times and activities when this happens for me. Fly fishing immediately comes to mind, however, there are other activities and the common denominator shared by all of them is the removal of distractions.

For me, fly fishing is the perfect means to achieving flow as it has built-in distraction barriers. The act of standing in flowing water alone requires a focus that is prohibitive of checking email, texting, or scrolling through social media feeds.

I often take my phone on my pursuits to have as a camera, however, I have found “getting the picture” to be almost as much of a distraction in itself. What’s more important, the fishing or getting the perfect picture of the fishing or the fish to be posted later?

Ultimately, the truth is that connectivity is anathema to flow. To achieve one, we must remove the other. According to Preston, “There’s a simple science to it, but the bottom line is that in order to really experience flow, we have to train ourselves to disengage from the distractions that surround us all day every day.”

Preston’s article was a wonderful reminder and reinforcement of the importance of unplugging daily. The outdoors, be that a river in Idaho or the goat pen in our front pasture, has always served as the best conduit to my ability to unplug, with writing and reading ranking a close second.

Consequently, it was in my reading this week that I was reminded once again of the concept of flow–in particular its relation to meditation and the importance of both to escaping the connectivity that is ever encroaching upon our daily lives. I am currently reading “The Practice of the Wild” by Gary Snyder. I discovered Snyder’s work during a Craft of Poetry course at Mississippi State and he remains a personal favorite.

The opening lines of his poem “Riprap” that I referenced always come to mind when I think of Snyder as well as when I think of the writing process; however, it was his essays in “The Practice of the Wild” and the following quote about meditation and “being the stream” that had me once again contemplating flow and fly fishing.

According to Snyder, “Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies. Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally into it.”

Reading that quote was a “eureka” moment for me. I realized that it is in those moments when I am joined with the river that I am least distracted and most connected. I am, to quote Snyder, both “out of the world” and “totally into it.”

Here’s to losing ourselves in the flow, to being so engrossed in our endeavors that hours pass like minutes, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.

Email outdoors columnist Brad Dye at braddye@comcast.net.