“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.” — Mark Twain   

It was somewhere around Waterford that I first realized that my phone was no longer getting a signal. 

No email. No phone calls. No text messages, voicemails or Facebook notifications for the foreseeable future, and good riddance to them. 

I looked blandly at the feckless phone, wondering what back-home news it was just dying to tell me, before hucking it into the back seat.  

We continued driving west and within 45 minutes or so we were making our first stop along the Kancamagus Highway that weaves through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. 

That first stop: a little stretch of the Swift River that surged over the ragged path of rocks it had washed clean over millennia. For the next 15 minutes, it washed my feet and knees clean, too, as I sat upon a granite chair and listened to nothing but the music of water and wind. 

Twenty minutes after that, I was standing with a group of strangers and staring upon the ancient mountains from the Pemigewasset Overlook. Off into the miles of distance was nothing but wilderness. Not a single man-made structure as far as the eye could see. 

After that, it was the CL Graham Wangan Overlook. More mountains, more distance and more of that sweet song of nature. By this point, I was already feeling like Henry David Thoreau all drunk on nature, but man, there was so much more to see. 

Every step along that long passage through the mountains seems jampacked with beauty and mystery a million years in the making. 

Just a little ways into the woods at the Crawford Connector trailhead, I met a man of vast age who wore an enigmatic little smile you just knew it had taken him a lifetime to build. He was wearing ragged hiking clothes and badly scuffed boots, this fella, but with that smile, he looked like the richest man in the world ambling through the forest. 

It was around this time that it occurred to me that I don’t get out into real nature nearly often enough. And all at once I seemed to have full understanding of all you fine people who head out into the wilderness every chance you get. You people, formerly weirdos to me, who prefer tents and sleeping bags over hotel room service and indoor pools. 

Out there with night falling on the mountains, I came closer to understanding why men like Joe Lelansky spent so much time hiking those mountains, forever seeking new corners of the wilderness to experience for the first time. I came to understand that desire, more like a biological imperative to some, to unplug completely from the rest of the world. 

I tell you, I was moved by the mountains. Though I’ve been there dozens of times before, this time something just seemed to click into place. And one of the greatest features of that paradise, to me, was the fact that the phone signals we all live by couldn’t penetrate it. 

I spent hours out there never once wondering what was going on back in Lewiston. I never once felt the itch to poke around the headlines to see what was the latest on Donald Trump’s narrow escape from the assassin’s bullet. 

Not once — not for a single second during those six to eight hours in the wild — did I experience the usual nagging sense of panic over the thought that I might be missing drama back at home. 

For some reason unknown to me, when I stepped into the wilderness around the White Mountains, that wilderness got my full attention. A rarely used part of my brain seemed to light up nice and bright, becoming engaged with nature instead of trying to respond to the bombardment of nonstop information this technological age subjects us to. Those forever bits and bytes of information couldn’t get me out here, and I loved the mountains for it. 

When I was a boy of 9 or 10, I was enamored with the show “Grizzly Adams.” I swore to myself, with all the earnestness that only a boy that age can muster, that as soon as I was big enough, I would live that kind of life. I would walk into the wilderness, I promised myself, and build a life there, never coming out again to the aggravations of the civilized world. 

On Sunday, I started to wonder if maybe those childhood instincts were right. 

But alas, it was the end of the weekend and obligations at work wouldn’t afford me any more time in the mountains. We headed for home again and the very minute we rolled back into Lewiston, instead of that ancient corner of my brain lighting up, it was my revived phone. 

DING, went one message. “Shots fired in Lewiston!” 

BZZT, went the next. “Man down at Hillview! What are you hearing?” 

DING: “Looks like murder out on Rideout! Are you on this?” 

Reality doesn’t slowly return, it knees you in the groin and jabs you in the eye with its assailing waves of information beaming down from the sky. 

When I switched on my computer, there was all that and more. Click here for the latest news on the Trump assassination attempt! Check out this link to read all the trio of celebrities who died this weekend! More violence in Lewiston! What are city leaders going to do about it? 

It was midnight, but messages were coming in left and right. Emails. Texts. Facebook notifications boinked and bopped. Civilization, with all its wonders and aggravations was glad to have me back.

Normally after a trip, I’m happy to be at home and in the thick of things again. 

This time, though? This time was different. 

All things considered, I’d rather be back on the Kancamagus.