To Recharge, Unplug
It’s time for my annual computerless, e-mail-free, no-blog, no-television getaway with the family.
The “no computing” part of the plan prompts the same response from friends.
I envy your Luddite getaway, they say, as if the unplugging was vacation enough. Pause. By the way, where’d you say you’re going?
Orcas Island.
We both sigh wistfully, and our sighs seem to recall an age when chat meant speaking face-to-face, when “connecting” meant warm voices on the telephone, when Ping was a duck, when trips to coffee houses meant conversing with strangers, not lonely hunching over laptops.
Yes, we leave tomorrow for Orcas Island, where we’ll swim, hike, fish, read, agate-hunt, chop wood, and play with the dog. We’ll plan nothing and savor everything. We’ll let the hours slip by as they will, let chance encounters stretch into an afternoon — or an entire day.
Most Orcas neighbors are in their 80s, or 70s, and well know what the sighs recall. You can drop by uninvited, borrow a tool, and spend some time, because time moves slower on Orcas Island.
You can count on Bill being at the fishing dock. You can count on a checker at the Island Market inquiring after Jane Barfoot. And you can count on a short, polite chat with a visitor from California who speaks quickly, briefly admires your fish or Cascade Lake’s beauty, then turns back to his comrades to talk real estate prices, or startup investments.
And after four or five days, you’ve slowed down to Orcas Island time, and you forget what day it is, and you don’t need a watch, and you don’t need or want a computer, and your soul’s been recharged by a great novel, and your wife and kids are beautiful.
So these words will auto-post at 23:58 Wednesday, August 19, 2009, and the “tomorrow” written above will have traveled from nine days past to the new now, and I’ll be sleeping in a forest as silent as death and as fragrant as life, and in surrounding days will dwell, for a time, gratefully oblivious to the magic of servers and electronics and the Internet that make all this possible.
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5 Comments to To Recharge, Unplug
Sounds beautiful. It’s been years since I’ve been to the San Juan Islands. I think it might be time for a visit soon!
I hope you guys are having a wonderful time (reading this blog I am sure you are!)
We just returned from 8 days / 7 nights in Cancun, Mexico. Although we didn’t unwire ourselves completely, we went mostly without. That was intentional and mostly refreshing. You need to get away once in a while.
I will admit I am a luddite. Although my phone has Internet access and text messaging, I continue to avoid the always-connected Blackberry or iPhone.
Orcas was fabulous as always, haven’t read a newspaper for three weeks and feel better for it. Highly recommended R&R.
Cancun sounds fabulous, too (I’ll never understand those ads showing people with laptops on the beach…)
Hi, I am actually interested in how you were able to auto-post entries as described above. Please shed some light on this subject! I am about to leave the country and do microfinance volunteer work for 4 months. This tip would be excellent!
In WordPress, which is the only blogging tool I know how to use, you click on the “edit” link next to “Publish immediately,”then set the date and time.
After that, you hit “Publish.”
Make sure you set the date and time first, otherwise whatever you wrote will appear immediately on the site!
Hope this helps. Otherwise, refer to WordPress help.
Have a great trip – sounds like an extremely worthwhile venture -