I did not take a watch on our recent camping trip. It really did not matter what time I woke up and climbed out of the tent, what time I sipped tea and ate breakfast, what time I went biking or ate lunch. You can actually tell pretty accurately by the sun's standing in the sky and the quality of the sunlight about what time it is - not that it really matters when you're on vacation. It is nice to just let yourself float through the day by your feelings of hunger or need for rest or activity. The accounting of time and its equation with money rob time of its magical qualities - and us of our connection with nature. Charles Eisenstein wrote that John Zerzan thought "Clocks make time scarce and life short." Remember when childhood summer afternoons stretched languorously and lazily into eternity? I am sure it has happened to you that you had to get something specific done in a fairly short amount of time - and managed somehow magically to accomplish it within that tight timeframe. Swedish children's book author Astrid Lindgren wrote in The Children of Noisy Village that it is those endless Christmas Eve afternoons that are responsible for our gray hair because those afternoons stretch on forever and ever and ever. And you might have seen Salvador Dalí's famous painting of the stretchy clocks.

It's Labor Day week-end. Put your watch away and enjoy time without counting it.