Unplugged.

Yeah. Right. You, lady, are insane.


I don't know, Daddy, I still think I could take the moose out...

bet I can get this whole cone in my mouth...

I win.



this was more fun when I was dumping all these pieces all over the floor...

It was a time unplugged. In a sense.

Once upon a time, as a child, unplugged meant something quite different than what it means to me today. Then, it meant no electricity, no plumbing, no radios. When we went camping, we left it all behind, packed up our canoes with plastic containers from Dunkin Donuts...the ones that were once filled with blueberry, apple or lemon fillings (remember when they still made those donuts?), now filled with sleeping bags, clothes, tents and tarps, food and other supplies one might need for two weeks in the wild (m&m's for me and my sister, a large bottle of whiskey for my parents).

We canoed everywhere, on the Rangely Lakes, down the Saco, the Androscoggin, the west branch of the Penobscot River, even along the coast of Maine, around islands with rip tides strong enough to bend canoes around rocks. We would paddle to a lobster pound, pick them out of a trap, bring them back to camp crawling around in our canoes, then kill them quickly in hot boiling water. Minutes later, we'd crack them open, sitting around on glacial rocks over looking the bay, cracking claws, sucking the tiny legs, pushing meat out of the tails, making a glorious, barbaric mess. Lobster never tasted better. Before or since.

That was then. This past jaunt up to Maine, unplugged merely meant without a computer. If we had brought a laptop, though, we would have had internet access, in addition to a washer and dryer, a microwave, a gas fireplace, a jacuzzi...well, it was basically a picture out of House Beautiful. The wildest I got was building a wood fire in a pit to roast marshmallows. No swinging out over a river on an insanely high tire swing to let go and fly through the air before hitting the water with a back burning smack; no lashing of canoes together to create a floating city that moved lazily down the then quiet currents of the Saco; no paddling like a bastard to beat the thunderstorm that spontaneously cracked open the sky while we were in the middle of Chesuncook.

Ah...Chesuncook Village. Population: 6, year round. Accessible by plane, or boat. No roads. “The Store” was a front porch. It sold four things; ice, frozen pizza, chocolate, and homemade root-beer. All of which were stored in a fridge at least 40 years old.

Now I am almost 40 years old. And that first morning in Maine, in our expensive, hi tech “cabin” in the woods, I awoke with a sense of expectation I hadn't felt since I was a child. Because I smelled the lake, and the pine, and saw the thick mist rolling over the surface of the water, and the Impling had never seen it before. We dressed quickly a little after 6 and headed down to the dock together. The first of many mornings of simply being.

The Impling is a child who can be in the moment so supremely, so utterly, you can't help relaxing into it with her. There is the water. The mountains, the sun. We sat together, lost in time, and just looked, and felt and listened. Watched the mist evaporate, the water begin to stir, the shadows shorten. Felt the damp of the mist and the cool early morning air. Heard the soulful cry of a loon echo across the water. It was so simple. We played. We laughed together at nothing at all but our own delight in each other.

We canoed, put together a puzzle, swam, hiked, and through it all, the Impling continued to meet each moment on her own terms. Throwing around a stuffed duck took precedence over the lake some times. Wading in the water was not an occupation for an hour, but an afternoon. We slowed down. We breathed.

I recognized how distracted I had become at home. How easy it was to turn on the computer, how difficult to not pay attention to it from moment to moment while it was on. At any point, at any moment, someone might be trying to contact me, through an email, through a comment, through a new post...and it is so easy to sit down “for a moment” to “just check”.

I realized, coming home, hearing the thrum of the fan as the computer booted up, that some change was necessary. Because I suddenly felt like it was a chain, rather than a release. I don't write to live, I live to write.

So from now on, the computer goes on when the Impling naps, and after the Impling goes to bed. This means much less time for reading and commenting, my friends, and it will take me a week to do the rounds once, so undoubtedly I'm going to be missing some great writing. But the Impling...I can't miss.

I carry a sense of freedom with me in the mornings now, as we get out of the closeness of the apartment to tramp around and “see what we can see”, following our noses, and stopping now and then, to just be.

*******

I'm on a roll...more Maine love over at New England Mamas...