Of Packing And Isolation

This was my first trip back to The Ranch following the burial of my mother, and in a real sense the last time I had been back alone since March of this year.  In a real sense, it represents the denouement of this phase of my involvement with The Ranch as we move into new territory.

The place itself has changed little enough:  it is the hot and dry season of Summer and so everything is either the golden brown of husks or the green and brown of the survivors.  This weekend was a relief from the heat of the weeks before, in some ways actually cooler than at New Home 2.0.

In the sitting down and writing of out of a list of tasks and reviewing them, I realized that I am much closer to the completion of the sorting of the house than I had thought. As of my departure yesterday, the interior is 99% sorted, outstanding a few things I want to revisit next month - along with the garage, which is the next item on the list to be completed (and should go much faster, as they are simply bigger chunks to sort).  Perchance by September, we will be in a position of having someone come through and hopefully buy out what is to be gone, leaving the retained items - mostly furniture for living when someone visits, along with the various and sundries that the family has identified as needing to be kept.

The biggest difference, though, was that nature of the Ranch this weekend.  For the first time in the over 20 years since my parents moved there, there was no connection to the outside world.

There was no satellite or or InterWeb, no cell phone coverage, no land line.  No updates from the Outer World were possible (except, oddly enough, my text messages, which for the first time seemed to work).  None of this is a surprise of course:  the landline and Dish were stopped years ago and the InterWeb more recently, when I no longer was working from the house (our cell phone coverage, while continuing to slowly come up the hill from my hometown, is still not here).  As a result of this it is just like it used to be when I came up here before all of that:  a trued island of isolation in a world of noise, information overload, and bustle.

The though does not confront you until you go to check the computer or the phone and realized that it is simply impossible to contact anyone or know anything because there is no way to do so - yes, I suppose, one could fire up radio and listen or even go down to Uisdean Ruadh's and use his network, that was simply more effort than I cared to make.

How oddly relieving it was to realize that one cannot know about the world because one cannot contact the world nor can the world contact one. One is left with the practices of old times:  reading, writing, listening, thinking, conversing with others.

As I sat with my cup of coffee in my hand in the cool breeze of the morning that belied the heat of later in the day, the world of 30 years ago hit me full force, where connectivity was expensive and we paid by the minute.  Were we less in touch, or did we spend more time in other things because the cost of "being connected" outweighed its perceived benefits.

It is a bit of a wistful thought of course;  if and when I start coming here even for remote work (which I hopeful to start asking for next year), I will need to get InterWeb and so the connection will be there.  But being conscious of it means that I should manage it better and more:  like many things, just because I can do something does not mean I should do something.

And so I find myself poised in a transitional space, clearing out the old so I can move on - but conscious that moving on in some ways may mean looking backwards rather than forwards.