Or that, as you finally make a connection after countless efforts to report your whereabouts and check your office voice mail, that the phone abruptly disconnects.

It no longer matters because by then the heart rate has slowed. The muscles that kept your face tense from worry have relaxed.

The knitted brow is soon replaced by a shoulder shrug. Those shoulders, you notice, also returned to their birth place -- around your neck, not over your head like some protective gear.

Finally it dawns on you: How many McDonald's Happy Meals ago was it, how many drop offs and pick ups at summer camp, how many doctor and dental appointments, commutes to and from work was it that you let nature run its course through your heart and soul? If memory serves, too long.

Nikki Giovanni wrote in her classic poem "My House" that although keeping dirty the windows in her home meant that she couldn't look out, she delighted in knowing it also meant that other people couldn't look in. Being incapable of using the cell phone meant not being able to call out. It also meant that others, equally submissive to the whims of satellites and towers, couldn't call in. The communications blackout meant not knowing, until days later, the extent of the devastation caused by Dennis and Bret and of the horror in the eyes of earthquake victims in Turkey. It meant not yet knowing that cancer claimed Jennifer Paterson and reduced cable television's delightful "Two Fat Ladies" down to one.

It meant that you could, if just for a few blissful days of walking the trails of Cathedral Woods, forget that the Scopes monkey trial had been dusted off for a millennial retrospective in the whole state of Kansas.

There is sweet decadence in solitude, even when shared with a party of six that has convoyed and ferried to this idyllic island, an artists' colony.

And so as you gaze daily from your sanctuary -- a huge rock in the Atlantic that is home to seagulls, puffins, pets and humans, and look across the meadow, beyond the seascape, you begin to exhale. Slowly. Loudly.

In moments of peace and quiet, the sight of the setting sun produces within you genuine wonder. Nevertheless, you are mindful that elsewhere, in places parched by drought, in places where stalks are as yellow as their corn, the sight of the descending sky ball brings another form of joy. Relief.

As you watch the water embrace this New England port of call and nip at the heels of headlands with names like Burnt Head and Black Head and White Head, any sense of urgency dissolves.

The only business opportunity you sincerely miss is never having been able to catch the sweet little girls down the road who operate "C\O's" lemonade stand on the main road. Maybe tomorrow, you say.

You rediscover conservation: the importance of turning off lights in unoccupied rooms, of sorting plastic, newspaper, glass and aluminum; this is, after all, an island. Resources, natural and artificial, are limited.

You become accustomed to dinners by candlelight, something that tends to alter the mood for the better, particularly when mixed with the sounds of Johnny Hartman and the Bill Evans Trio playing on the CD player.

Occasionally, the cyclops that is the lighthouse light peers into a window, illuminating more than seems possible from such a distance.

We are a party of six, travelers from Boston, Eugene, Ore., and Kansas City, who share what has humbly been called "a cottage."

Aside from the laptop brought by the financial analyst among us, whose urgent business needed tending during his respite, we offer few traces of our former lives.

By the fourth day the laptop closes, shuts firmly like a slammed door. Its owner smiles and soon his shoulders, descending from around his ears, announce that he has mentally "Gone Fishing."

Each night the island sun sinks and leaves pastel traces of pink and blue on the horizon. The scene is repeated indoors in paintings at the studio of Maine artist Lawrence Goldsmith. It seems that Goldsmith, besides being an amiable fellow, has been handed his palette by God. Some artist named Wyeth owns one of the neighboring islands, the locals report.

"Oh? That's nice," you reply, more matter-of-factly than you intend. But who can think of Andrew or Jamie now, when you're giggling from the sight of whales at play on the voyage here and keep wondering why you didn't hurl the cell phone over the cliffs of White Head when you had the chance.