Beach House Diaries: Reconnecting by Disconnecting

Once the flurry of opening the beach house for the season is over, I slip into my vacation routine as easily as I do my worn deck shoes. As summer unfurls on Pictou Island, days follow familiar contours and activities take on the quality of ritual. The funny thing is that while such repetitiveness at home feels tedious -- even stifling -- folks tend to revel in it at the shore. Of course, the shapes our individual holiday routines take can be vastly different.

For those whose getaway creed is "it's the freakin' weekend, baby; I'm about to have me some fun" a vacation may revolve around daily happy hours and last calls at a favorite waterfront club. For me, it's about lazy days when swims are taken, games are played, campfires are laid and s'mores are made. The wrinkle is that to participate fully in such moments I must first "unplug" -- and that's no simple task in a world where Wi-Fi hot spots and cell phone towers multiply as quickly as Pictou Island's bunny population.