Disconnected

It was one in the morning, and I was completely disconnected.

The sliver of a moon had long set, and above me was a solid black sky studded with more stars than I had ever seen. The Milky Way drifted like a gossamer scrim across a swath of inky eternity, and Jupiter rose over a nearby tree, shining like a beacon. A large chorus of bullfrogs sang in the distance. Theirs was a primitive, wordless music, which started with a few isolated twangs like a rubber band. Then, as if a froggy conductor stepped up to a stump of a podium in white tie and tails to direct the orchestra, a deep and steady thrummmmmmm, and then silence. Then, after a few measures of relative quiet, the twangs signaled the orchestra's warm up again.

We were on a long weekend driving trip to see friends in Michigan, and I hadn’t checked my email in three days. Or seen a newscast, or read a paper. It felt weird…and wonderful. I wish I could have said the same thing about my cell phone during this trip, but with four kids to keep tabs on as well as elderly relatives faltering more by the day, that was out of the question. But just now, at this hour, even the phone was turned off and left behind in the house.

The place where we stayed was in a rolling area of southern Michigan known as the “Irish Hills.” Two days earlier, and only a few hours into the trip, our frenzied and frustrated pace had vanished as soon as we rounded Gary, Indiana, and decided to ditch the bumper-to-bumper construction-delayed traffic crawling on the interstate in favor of something more rustic…and moving faster.

Our first official nod to “vacation time” was a stop at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, where we parked our folding chairs on a sandy beach and ate the sandwiches I’d picked up from Panera Bread at 7:30 that morning. The wind was stiff and cold, and the waves were high. Seagulls hovered in anticipation around our feet and lurked, hovering, just over my left shoulder until we finished lunch, leaving them no leftovers. I took picture after picture of the parks’ pavilion, made of intricately patterned red brick and faintly Moorish detail. I took the wheel for a while, relearning how to drive a stick shift. I killed the engine a good dozen times at various stop lights, and added another fifty miles to the drive when I missed a road sign as I was struggling to put the Chevy into first gear again…and again.

We took the meandering old Chicago Road that had begun as an Indian trail, and turned into the main pre-interstate route between Detroit and Chicago. Or—around two hundred years ago—the primary military transport road between Detroit and Fort Dearborn. The two-lane road now ran through tiny towns with names like New Buffalo and White Pigeon, and was lined with houses that wore their age gracefully, with gingerbread flourishes and deep shady porches and lush hanging baskets filled with petunias. "For Sale" signs abounded...as did occasional pockets of commerce.

It was a land of few McDonalds but any number of one-of-a-kind restaurants, and a handful of drive-ins as well. We ate burgers and fries and Cokes at one, and I rued the fact that there were no tailfins on the little silver Aveo. As soon as we’d placed our order, the radio station started playing something by the Beach Boys. And then Martha and the Vandellas. And Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. We sat in a time warp as we scarfed down our meals.

In the three days we escaped from routine, we canoed on a series of quiet, sleepy lakes, making our way through flotillas of water lilies. The only sounds that surrounded us were bird calls and the occasional slap of lily pads against the sides of the boat. We went to a backyard barbecue, played a seriously competitive game of beanbag toss, ate at Harold’s Diner, took in a rodeo, just sat around.

We would be leaving early the next morning, with more than three hundred miles to drive to get back to our daily lives. The Chicago Road would inevitably have to give way to holiday traffic on the Indiana and Illinois Tollways. And I’d eventually have to sit back down at a computer and connect with the "real" world.

But the evening air was cooling fast, and the sky above was absolutely hypnotizing. I pulled my folding chair closer, and rested my head on the soft leather jacket covering a familiar shoulder. As the bullfrogs periodically gave their throats a rest, a bunch of coyotes chimed in and howled in the distance. Fireflies sparkled brightly, illuminating the drift of fog rising from the lake across the road.

And as I nestled in and looked up at the stars above, I felt completely…connected.