“I slept with the phone next to my bed in case my boss had to get ahold of me,” she said. “I was tethered to that phone. I didn’t realize how much I was on it until I looked at my vacation pictures. All the pictures I was in, I was staring at my phone.”

Then, about a year and a half ago, her husband had persuaded her to move here — he’s a Green Bank man, “born and raised,” and yearned to return home. Nowadays, “My husband and I go to dinner, and we talk all through the night” with no interruptions, she said . Her husband rattles around in an old truck, knowing that if it breaks down, somebody will stop and pick him up. If you need to make a call, you can always stop into the Dollar General and ask to use their landline — but really, when do you need to make a call?

This life is not for everyone, she told me, and she has seen a lot of people up and leave. Maybe 80 percent of people just can’t hack it.

I know I’m part of that 80 percent. I belong on the outside. But at the same time, I feel as if something essential to my sanity depends on the existence of places like this.

On my third and final day in town, the observatory’s largest instrument, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, shut down for maintenance, and I was allowed to summit it. The telescope is taller than the Statue of Liberty and one of the largest man ufactured, steerable objects on the face of our planet. An elevator that jerked like an amusement-park ride took us to the top, where a steel walkway led out onto the surface of the dish, a two-acre white expanse. I watched a maintenance worker moon-walk across its bouncy surface. He appeared to be lost in a white desert, the blue sky hanging below him like a lake.