A year ago this morning, my fondest dreams were of cold soda and indoor plumbing.
It was my last day of a short absence from modern civilization. As a volunteer on a wildlife study on an uninhabited island off the New England coast, I was sunburned, aromatic, and had a headache from too much reading by too few candles the previous night. Despite all that, I wasn't ready to leave yet, but commitments in the "real world" left me no choice. The icy colas and hot showers I planned to enjoy at my first opportunity would be my best attempt at beating back my envy of those researchers and volun
Something else I'd missed while on the island: the Internet. In my daily life, I had long since come to think of it as ubiquitous. It is, of course, no such thing and being apart from it had been the first, and most daunting, challenge of my island sojourn. Late that Sunday afternoon, as the fishing boat that was my ride back to the mainland pitched and swayed through a gathering storm, I took shelter in the cabin, pulled my iPhone from my pack, and turned it on to see if I was near enough to land to have d