Adjustment

I want to go camping this weekend. I am tan from the Italian sun, tannest shoulders I've ever had. Blonde streaks in my hair. Feet and legs strong from consecutive 10-mile walking days. I've returned home from Europe without a mobile phone-- it is probably still in the seat-back pocket of seat 18E on Aer Lingus flight 403 from Rome to Dublin. Adapting back to regular American life is a bit stalled, as dreams of cappuccinos from the downstairs cafe on Via Arenula and steamy nights on the cobbled streets of Trastavere, distant sounds of Vespas still swirl before my eyes.

I came back and Boston gave up its 2024 Olympics bid. The Brazilian coffee shop on the neighborhood corner closed and moved into the grocery store across the street. Other than that, everything seems pretty much the same. Except that now we are now losing light every day, and the sun will set before 8 p.m. after this weekend. But summer isn't over yet.

It has been two years since I've hiked over the shoulders of mountains and looked down on sparkling rivers, scanning the banks for a good swimming spot. Sweat and dirt washes off in cool fresh streamwater. We make pepperoni and cheese rollups for lunch. We sleep in our tent on a platform by a beaver-dammed lake, high on the nape of the mountain's neck. There's a bear box and tarp-covered cooking area where we boil water for our Zatarain's rice and sausage dinner.

The simplicity of those things is what I crave. There was simplicity in Europe too, in other ways. The simplicity of never even missing a television or text message or twitter on your phone. The simplicity of not ever using a kitchen or groceries, instead exploring the neighborhood cafes, meeting people and asking for directions, and paying cash for everything. Yesterday morning I went to the grocery store for milk and cereal, and was sad that I would have to eat in my own house from now on, away from the sparkling life of local meeting spots.

When I was readying to board my flight to Boston in the Dublin international terminal, and I realized that I left my phone behind, before the customs check, in the last plane, I was horrified that all 600 photographs of our 12-day adventure in Europe were most likely vanished from my life. I didn't really think much about the apps, the texting and calling capabilities, the google maps that I so frequently depend on. Now that I have resigned myself to never seeing it again, I am reassured by the thought that though the pictures are gone, the experiences and memories are not. The practice and passion I found in photographing in a journalistic style, especially documenting the experience of my parents on their first ever journey abroad, will remain. And further, it's a blessing that I don't have to return to the isolation of modern life quite so quickly. I will have a few weeks of waiting and wondering, and hopefully savoring the time I have without a screen to look at, without a social distancing crutch, without convenience that precludes the necessity to ask for help, information, directions.

Then I realize how much of our lives will not be afforded this break from the oppression of technology-derived experiences. When else will we have the chance to experience the world naked and face-to-face?

For the next four days I'll use my laptop to look for jobs, and make to-do lists for cleaning and organizing the house, and finally write those wedding thank yous that my mother has shot me withering stares about. But perhaps this weekend we can drive up North and forget this world for a little bit longer. Using a trail map and a compass, we'll turn off any dependence on GPS or wifi. We'll be surprised by bends in the trail that we couldn't have known about beforehand. We'll say hello to fellow hikers who march placidly in the other direction. We'll listen for the wood thrush that beckoned us to our campsite two years ago in the failing light that spilled over the wooden boardwalk of the swampy trail. We'll bend over and inspect ghost-colored indian pipe poking up through the mud. We'll meet the pleasant hut caretaker who spends his days high in the hills who knows how. We'll sleep with our backs straight on the hard ground, and toss and turn and wonder what tomorrow will bring, hoping to find a hidden pool for drifting, face-up, contemplating the sky, whiling away the rest of the world.