Editor-In-Chief Scott Peterson's take on life(Photo: Matt Colby/Now Media Group)Buy Photo

I had forgotten how much joy I could get from looking up a word in the dictionary.

But I did that surprising thing when I was out of range ofcell phones and beyond the Wi-Fi frontier, and was desperate to understand a word in the book I was reading.

I dusted off a 1956-vintage Webster's dictionary that probably had not moved from the shelf in this cottage since the day it was published. But there it was, page after page of words, new (well knew to bobby socksers) and old alike, ready for me to browse and discover new things.

As a certifiable word nerd,I own literally dozens of dictionaries, but as the Internet turned my brain into oatmeal, I almost never get them out anymore. Who wants to go to "all that trouble" to look up a word when there is a tool in your pocket that makes it so fast and easy.

Northern Wisconsin has always been one of my favorite getaways, a state of mind where you can sample the best of how things used to be before modern life steamrollered over them.

But even the great indoors has new adventures, too, when you free yourself from the shackles of technology.

I saw my wife actually laying out kings and aceson the table to play solitaire with real playing cards. It was like I was reliving my childhood on days when I was sick and needed to entertain myself. No buttons, no flashing ads, no music. Just tactile and visual nourishment.

In a restaurant on the lake, it was the same thing. Back at home, couples would be staring at the little slabs from their pockets, conversing only to share the occasional Facebook post, if they talked at all, but here was a dining room filled with people talking to each other! The din from a roomful of chatter was invigorating.

Out on the lake, when we ran out of gas in the boat, I could have grabbed my phone and tried desperately to reach someone, but we did the old fashioned thing. We flagged down a passing boat, and met a friendly couple who gave me a ride back to our cottage, where we picked up gas and refueled. This is what people did back in the day.

I played Yahtzee with my wife. I got to know my future daughter-in-law better. I listened to the Brewers game on the radio. I sat by the lake and watched the sunset. I watched them make fudge through a storefront window in Minocqua. I bought groceries in a story that did not have 10,000 choices. I saw an otter swim past our boat. I went out for an ice-cream cone. I browsed in a book store (and it was crowded with other people doing the same thing). I meandered into an antique store, another place that has timeless treasures.

There are a lot of great reasons to escape in Wisconsin, but the ride in the time-machine is the most underappreciated part. You have the time to go back in time to remember the things that mattered. Sometimes, you have to go backward in order to find the way forward.

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Going off the grid: Was life really ever this relaxing? - Lake Country Now