Now that the trip is over, I should have it made. Office equipment does the work for me. The heaviest thing I lift is a phone, and even my motion while I'm sitting in my chair is aided by a marvel not associated with canoes-the wheel.

But back in the office barely a day, I'm already exasperated by the slow speed of my PC, aggravated by slow modem rates and overwhelmed by a pile of faxes.

The irony of it is that all this equipment has been designed to make my life simpler and more efficient. Time-saving products, they're called. Somehow, it's the revenge of the Luddites that all the labor-saving/time-saving equipment of the postwar era have made spare time a precious commodity to most Americans. We long for downtime the way Third-World women with wash-boards dream about a washing machine. A time-saving washing machine.

I've been wondering what went awry with labor-saving devices since touring a museum where they had several old automatic washers, etc., along with the original ads for them. One ad extolled the great time savings of a vacuum cleaner, certainly an attractive idea to those who had to haul carpets outside and beat them. And many things since-PCs, faxes, modems and others-all boast that they get work done much more quickly.

All I want to know is, what happened to the time they save? I easily save an hour by using a PC instead of a typewriter, a half hour by using a cell phone instead of stopping at a phone booth, another half hour by sending some e-mail messages instead of calling and leaving voice mail. And voicemail saves the time of calling back over and over again. Microwaving and speed dialing save more minutes every day.

I should be able to sleep 'til 9 every day and take Fridays off. Instead, I'm hurrying to meet deadlines, meet people and do many other things. The only time I get to use my hammock is when I go canoeing and don't have any time-saving equipment.

My hammock's now stashed away, but I think maybe I'll get to use it before I return to Boundary Waters next summer. They tell me my computer system will soon be upgraded to something that cuts processing time in half. So I should be able to sneak out and hang it in the back yard. Hopefully, the time I save will add up before snow falls.