I found a time machine on the Mendocino County line: The Gualala River

Last summer I went camping with family and stepped back in time.

With no Internet or cell service at our campground, we had no screens to look at. So when I walked to the river, the youngest camper in our group, a nine-year-old girl, followed me down to the water. I watched the birds, she dipped in her toes, and as we stood there quietly, not doing much of anything but enjoying being outside, I floated back to 1979.

That was cool.

The Gualala River, July of 2019

In 1979 I would have been that nine-year-old girl, and that summer I would have gone to Yosemite with my mother and sister for our annual camping trip. Most days camping my mother took off birding, leaving my sister to take me fishing at the creek. Bored by sitting, I would walk through the water, loving to watch the tiny fish swim past my feet.

The Internet and cell phones hadn't been invented when I was a kid, and I'm so grateful. I'm even grateful that I grew up without a television, though I hated it at the time. 

But now I can appreciate being forced to become bored and learn how to entertain myself with my surroundings. Lie in the grass and watch the bugs on the ground, the birds and clouds in the sky. Hold races with the leaves floating down the rain gutter.

And I loved how 40 years later I could have that again with another kid: Spend an afternoon just walking through the water and watching whatever nature sent floating by.