Get away from it all! What could be more appealing than that? So it was with rabid enthusiasm that my husband and I weighed into a bidding war at the church auction, for a weekend hideaway in the woods.
“I cannot wait!” were my exact words when ours was the winning bid.
I had no idea how true that would turn out to be.
No question, the cozy hideaway was as advertised and more. Hardly rustic by cabin standards, it featured heating, air conditioning, electric stove, microwave, refrigerator, coffeemaker, blender, and fashion décor. Pretty much everything but granite countertops and a home movie theater.
Its salute to “away from it all” was simply based on the remote location we were craving: no WiFi or cable, no cell service, and half an hour from the nearest grocery store.
“Unplugged!” I said. “That’s perfect.”
But eager as I was to get unplugged, I quickly discovered I was not prepared for my withdrawal from “plugged.” Most surprising was what I missed most.
Not talking on a cell phone was no problem. I rarely talk on it. Instead, I missed checking the weather and looking up the names of movies that I think I saw once but only vaguely remember the actors or the plot. I also missed using it secretly when my husband mentions someone who’s apparently famous and I have no idea who he’s talking about. Isolated, without Wi-Fi, I did a lot of “Oh, yeah” and changing the subject.
The phone, for me, has become the electronic version of the old Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia that my dad used to pull from the shelf during dinner time. ‘Wait a minute,” he used to say, “I’ll look that up.” Only now, there’s no waiting. Except when you’re in a cabin without cell service.
“How are we supposed to know what the weather’s going to do?” I asked my husband, missing the weather app that gives hourly temperature and humidity readings for my current location and that of all my grown children.
At the time, I was standing by floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a bird’s eye view of what the weather was doing at that very moment. He suggested looking at whether the leaves were wet, which would mean it was raining, or possibly waiting for the 11 o-clock news.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, now remembering that the cabin had a TV with three channels and probably among them, a weather man. Happily, the TV also had a rerun channel, which gave us a chance to get reacquainted with the Brady Bunch.
Challenging as techno-unplugging was, unplugging from our neighborhood grocery store three minutes away was harder.
Actual cravings had to wait in favor of what I thought would be cravings when we packed up. Unfortunately, I had not counted on a Diet Coke craving and spent a good half hour playing a game of Scruples with myself over whether to drink one left behind by the cabin owners or wait till we were back on the road. Scruples lost.
Still, away from the usual staccato pace, with a novel read and poem written, I have to admit that unplugging has a lot of merit.
“Would you do it again?” my husband asked.
“Can’t wait!” I said.
“I know,” said he.
Copyright 2015 Pat Snyder
