Headed upstate to the Adirondacks tomorrow for a monthlong writers’ residency, in a place that is not only remote but designed to stay that way. (By policy, where I’m going, cellphones can’t.)

Here’s my favorite writer, on the power of travel and leaving behind your daily routine:

…I was happy because of the shedding. I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide–sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself. I lived in a state of siege, always losing just what I wanted to hold on to. But on trips there was no difficulty. I could be talking to Andrew, talking to the children and looking at whatever they wanted me to look at–a pig on a sign, a pony in a field, a Volkswagen on a revolving stand–and pouring lemonade into plastic cups, and all the time those bits and pieces would be flying together inside me. The essential composition would be achieved. It was being a watcher that did it. A watcher, not a keeper.

–Alice Munro, “Miles City, Montana”