Dina L. Relles

I’ll spend much of this summer at my alma mater overnight camp with my three sons. I’ll work in the front office while the boys enjoy programming designed for staff kids. Each day, we’ll step outside to the dewy chill of early morning air. Come nightfall, we’ll huddle under fleece blankets in a modest bunk–two rooms adjoined by a bathroom–with a shared porch.

It is the way we disconnect and reconnect. Internet access is spotty at best. The rhythm of life slows to a stripped-back simplicity. The nights are black and still, with no dishes to wash or house to keep. After the camp quiets and the boys are kissed goodnight, it is just me, my words, and the wilderness.

Yet there’s a steady buzz in the front office. And we eat our meals in a communal dining hall that accommodates several hundred people. Walls are thin, and little separates you from nature or neighbor. It’s a strange confluence of constant community and soul-searching silence.

It is the way we mark time. We did this last year, and that we’ll be back there again signals another year has passed. It leaves me thoughtful of all that’s come between summer’s brackets.

Frankly, we’re in need of a change. Our routine has grown rote. We cycle through our days like a tired, monochromatic wardrobe. I’ve prepared the same dinner each night for two weeks straight (pasta, chickenless nuggets, edamame, if you’re curious), only to use the leftovers for lunches. The boys have fallen into an undesirable habit of waking in the 5:00 hour, and I know: we all sleep more soundly at camp.

Sometimes we need to shift perspective to truly see. It’s time to take in the tiny new freckle on the small of my oldest son’s back. To listen carefully as he fills my ears with the complicated details of last night’s dream. To step away from the minivan that shuttles us everywhere and be within walking distance of all our destinations. To sit on the earth. Summer is for slowing down, for noticing. And this narrowing, scaling back, stripping away–it’s also somehow an expansion. It is in this smallest, simplest life that we see what looms large.

I may not be as connected or responsive over the coming months, but you can be sure I’ll be writing, and living, in my cabin in the woods…surrounded by all that matters.

Wishing you a wonderful summer of stepping back, sinking in, taking stock…whatever suits you.

There once was a time Before Computers–a second B.C.–that we’re now using our computers to delete: a time before e-mail, msgs, apps, and urls, when privacy wasn’t a setting and attachments were to people, when search meant finding something in the real world, and being connected meant you weren’t alone. – Adam Ross’ blurb on Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen