Loons laughed, wailed and moaned as we enjoyed perfect vacation weather last week on a peaceful North Country lake called Harvey’s in West Barnet, Vt.

Most of the time, it was just me, wife Joanne, grandson Jordi and the three dogs. No TV, no cell-phone service, no computer distractions. A heavenly change of pace in the upper Connecticut Valley foothills, about the same distance as West Whately from New England’s largest river.

We swam and fished and talked, hung and cooked out, came and went as we pleased, totally at our leisure, no phone calls, knocks on the door, annoying obligations or egos to stroke. All the while secluded in a spacious white-cedar log cabin along the forested west bank of the 400-acre glacier lake squished between mounts Harvey and Roy, the latter a long, pointed ridge facing us from across the lake, two vibrant green mowings and three silos glowing in bright sunlight from mid-morning on.

Harvey Mt. was behind us and invisible unless more than 100 yards out in the lake. I admired its distinctive shape several times while treading water and soaking up the hot sun. A cool, peaceful forest green, the mountain rose abruptly on both sides and stood like a giant gumdrop between sandbags. Near the eastern base, just down the road from our camp and perhaps 200 yards above the western shore, a wooden roadside water vat held together by rusted metal straps captured Jordi’s fascination. Cold, clear spring water flowed into it through an open cedar pipe exiting black, mossy ledge. A wooden exit spout poked out of the vat just below the water line, sending a steady stream splashing onto hard stone before entering a culvert that pulled it under the road and into the lake below. Jordi just had to taste it, then demanded we fill some milk jugs. We went home, found the jugs, filled them and drank sparkling, ice-cold spring water the rest of the week. He was impressed. Me too.

The solo ride home gave me a chance to reflect back on the vacation and life itself. As I drove Route 91 toward Hanover, N.H., refreshed and relaxed, dogs porta-kenneled on the truck’s open bed, I admired the majestic White Mountain on the sun-drenched eastern horizon. The views seemed so familiar, the gilt-topped, needle-nosed spires pinpointing riverside villages along both banks. A soothing sense of place embraced me, pulled me to its warm bosom. I knew I was at home in the valley of the Connecticut, a beautiful slice of paradise stained deeply by my ancestral DNA, good and bad, all the way from Saybrook to Pittsburg. The mood was perfect to get my wheels spinning in an introspective direction.

I had thoroughly enjoyed my first summer vacation since my kids were young. It will not be my last. Retirement is near, so close I can taste it, smell it, roll on my back in it. I even found myself pondering whether I could live every day isolated in the wilds without broadband. Of course, that may be a moot point. Soon high-speed will be everywhere, I suppose. All I know is that I had no problem adjusting to waking daily at first light and reading a long scholarly book, footnotes on the same page, in solitude by the lake before the rest of the house awoke. Then there were a few fishing rods, a bucket of crawlers, a tackle box and a pump-up Crosman BB gun to keep Jordi busy, boats and floats for swimming, balls for throwing to the dogs, and Pekarski’s finest to make the evening cookouts satisfying indeed. What else could a man desire? Well, actually, there is other stuff, some of which I found in my travels and during those glorious mornings sitting alone with my book, listening to trout rising and loons laughing as I sharpened my French & Indian War knowledge.

One luxury I couldn’t deny myself was listening to the Red Sox games. A lifelong fan, the Sox are hot, entertaining and likely headed for an autumn collision with the Phillies. It didn’t matter that I had to settle for a cheap, plastic, two-battery transistor radio, the kind I remember as a kid, antenna raised high, WTIC’s distant signal fading in and out during promising rallies and before crucial pitches. It served me well. I never once thought of visiting a tavern. The boob-tube would be waiting at home. So would the Sox. The day games were a different story. I’d take a country ride and listen to a local broadcast while exploring the countryside. I drove to the farm across the lake and found it was actually two contiguous farms owned by Northeast Kingdom brothers, sadly a dying breed since that great American hero of the right, Ronald Reagan, broke the trade unions and cleared the way for big-box dairy farms that sounded the death knell for small family farms. I met one of the brothers at the little convenience store/gas station that sold a little of everything a rural family could need, and served as a deer-checking station to boot. The fella, probably 70 or better, was taking his shiny new John Deere tractor for its first spin. He said it cost him less than $19,000, was made in India and assembled in Georgia, sad facts of global economy that didn’t seem to amuse him. The store we were visiting was my kinda place, the women behind the counter a little grumpy, wearing a look I familiarized myself with as a young, single man. It’s a hollow, save-me look, like they’re hoping a knight in shining armor from faraway will pass through and rescue them from dreadful isolation and male domination. Women’s liberation in the Kingdom? Uh-uh. Not among the common folk. But I guess they’re better off than the dazed Route 9 big-box staff; less people to deal with, better air to breathe and water to drink.

When the local radio station wasn’t carrying the ballgame, I got a taste of the political landscape and was somewhat surprised by the non-stop right-wing claptrap. One youthful-sounding broadcaster immediately caught my attention the day of my ride to the spring with Jordi. The guy was talking about how Windham County, with many economic advantages over the isolated Northeast Kingdom, was in much worse financial shape these days because of its liberal policies and spending habits. The thought of it spun him off into a stern, fatherly denunciation of the New Deal and FDR, whom he praised as a great wartime president, then pilloried as dangerous to American freedom because of his socialist programs that are still breaking our backs. He claimed FDR doubled the size of the Supreme Court after the nine sitting justices repeatedly shot down as unconstitutional his socialist programs. I don’t know if that’s true, and I refuse to research it. But the whole discussion just supported my opinion that this annoying debt-ceiling debate is indeed the Republicans’ last-ditch effort to seal the Bush-Cheney goal of obliterating the New Deal. Why else would you fight two wars, including one in a country with a history of bankrupting empires, without raising taxes to pay for it? And think of it, if they can bankrupt America now and wipe out the New Deal entitlement programs, they can blame it all on a demon named Obama. Could it be any better? A black man, no less. Perfect.

Gentile, old-time New England Republicans will wear a smug grin through it all, asking guests at cocktail parties if they’d like to see a destroyer and digging into their pockets for a dime with FDR’s bust on it. These dignified folks are more than happy to let vile Southern racists do their dirty work in congress. And guess what? The ignorant masses who slit their own throats every election by voting against their best economic interests in the name of God and guns, will take it hook, line and sinker, triumphantly dancing in the streets to the beat of Madame Defarge’s bass drum.

Oops. I mustn’t digress. Back to the lake, me and Jordi fishing, catching bucketsful of voracious worm-eaters called pumpkinseeds and yellow perch off the dock. We|didn’t go after the rainbow trout breaking the surface in the early morning as I read in seclusion on the screened-in porch overlooking the lake. The book was “Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies & Tribes in the Seven Years War in America,” by Francis Jennings, that irreverent historian whose stars-and-stripes critics pejoratively call him a “revisionist,” while those who understand that all governments lie see it another way. They call Jennings courageous for telling the truth. The man tells it like it is after scouring archives from both sides. The records typically prove that nothing ever changes when it comes to war, seldom fought for freedom and justice. More like profit and greed, subjugation and exploitation, which have nothing to do with freedom or justice. Too bad more people don’t read “liars” like Jennings. They might just discover how hauntingly simple it is to draw parallels to what’s going on today. But don’t tell anyone. It’s unpatriotic, kinda like allowing the men and women who fight our wars to die in the alleyways, rot in wheelchairs and commit suicide in the barn. Sad but true. Like Jennings said, the men selected to fight wars are seldom important to the economy. They often remain unimportant cogs when they come home.

I was thinking about Jennings’ thesis and how it related to what I already knew about the French & Indian and other wars as I approached the sign welcoming travelers to Massachusetts. Soon I would be pulling into my driveway, releasing the dogs and stretching my legs after 142 alluring miles. Once there, I discovered my first two Sicilian heirloom tomatoes ripe on the vine as I walked the dogs to the backyard kennel. Dogs secured, I walked back to the house and found my mail piled high in a basket I had left in the carriage shed for my friend. I glanced through it and was pleased to discover a Satchel Paige biography, the new “Rolling Stone” and a New England Outdoor Writers Association newsletter.

Yes, the lake, the loons and the grouchy ladies at the till were far in my rearview, but I had more than enough to keep me busy at home, a special place infected with a happy, historic spirit to savor.