The State of Disconnect

Goodbye, Cabin #53, thank you for the memories. And for the humidity that fogged my camera lens for one final pic.

Our family spent a recent vacation at a state park in Nebraska.  Unexpectedly, we found ourselves without wifi and also without cell service.  And in order to get to our destination we made a painful several-hundred-mile drive across the western part of the state.  Feel the obvious joke coming on?

Maybe instead of calling it the Cornhusker State, Nebraska should be called the Disconnected State.

I have heard and made many jokes about Nebraska (having spent lots of time there I can… right?).  But I make this (barely humorous) zinger out of the pleasant inability to reach the outside world from our remote getaway.   Yes, we had to jog up the road to find one bar of service, which was a necessity only to text directions to friends and family coming to the cabin to visit.  I love the irony of this.  We only needed the barest minimum of worldly connection to truly reconnect.

And reconnect we did.

We sat for hours with friends from college and grad school, laughing and shedding some tears.

We visited with family friends whom we hadn’t seen since our wedding.

We watched the next generation of cousins play kickball and build with legos.

We solved the world’s problems with my sis- and brother-in-law during a late night session.

We rediscovered the Best Zoo in the World (Henry Doorly in Omaha) with our kids, a collective birthday gift from their amazing aunt and uncle.

We sang bad camp songs while paddle boating and braved the wave pool at the nearby aquatic center.

Reconnected in disconnection.  I pulled my phone out only to listen to My Favs on iTunes as I jogged the park trails, scanning the green vistas of the Platte River Valley.  Those were the only sounds emanating from my computerized mini-tether that week, a sort of celebration of what it really means to be a part of the world.