The break I badly needed has come. I’m spending four nights camping at Spirit Lake in northwestern Iowa with Matt Miller.
We are really roughing it. Steaks and beers fill up the coolers. Last night we hopped from bar-to-bar. Today we shot some of the most miserable games of pool the two of us have ever conjured. Now after a refreshing shower, I’m pecking away on a laptop computer.
Okay, so we aren’t really roughing it at all.
It’s such a relief to replace yelling across the newsroom with skipping stones across the water. To replace driving from assignment to assignment to assignment with hiking aimlessly through wooded trails.
It’s such a relief to do away with alarm clocks, appointments and cell phones.
And even though we aren’t breaking completely away from civilizations, there are some simple pleasures that we are enjoying that we don’t normally: cooking over an open fire, sleeping under the stars, peeing outside.
