When the four of us launched our kayaks into the turbulent, remote waters of Quebec’s Manicouagan Lake a couple weeks ago, we severed ties with civilization: No electricity, no cell-phone service and, as it turned out, not one other human for more than 100 miles.

Manicouagan is one of the planet’s largest annular, or bullseye-shaped lakes, formed some 214 million years ago by a three-mile-wide asteroid that crashed into Earth with such force that it liquefied rock five miles deep and shot a wall of flames as far away as what is now New York City. After the impact zone cooled some 5,000 years later, water filled a ring around the 40-mile-wide crater, and today, Manicouagan, visible from space, is known as “The Eye of Quebec.”

I’ll write about our expedition in a future column. This week, I’ll focus on the double-edged sword of venturing into wilderness. On one hand, it’s exhilarating to be self-reliant and free from contemporary intrusions; on the other, being cut off can be disquieting or, gulp, even terrifying.

Straying off the grid during such international and political volatility, we wondered: Would the United States be at war with North Korea upon our return? Would Trump still be president?

I recall a similar, nearly month-long incommunicado period years ago while attempting to climb Argentina’s Aconcagua, at 22,841 feet the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere. Our expedition departed from Chile just as that nation’s dictator, Augusto Pinochet, was being forced from power.

Troops draped with bandoliers and armed with assault rifles roamed the streets of Santiago — what would we be coming back to? As it turned out, a peaceful transition, but even as our team struggled amid fierce storms and high altitudes, we fretted over what was going on in the Chilean capital.

In an age of near-total connectivity, it’s hard to envision going more than an hour or two, let alone days or weeks at a time, without watching a TV news broadcast, listening to the radio, making a phone call, sending a text or checking your email.

How the heck did Magellan, Lewis and Clark and other early explorers get by?

Truth be told, on Manacouagan, we did have two tenuous links to civilization: a global positioning system and a rented GPS “spotter” that enabled us to send a satellite signal every night to the base where we launched, letting the manager know we were OK.

We later learned, however, that one night our signal never arrived, and the manager prepared to send a rescue boat to our last known position. Fortunately, our signal got through the following night.

The ability to stay in touch is also hard on family and friends back home. Severing the bond requires faith and fortitude among all parties. I’m blessed to have an understanding wife who supports my periodic forays into the hinterland, and I like to believe I’ve earned that trust by avoiding unnecessary risks. I turn back when things get really bad — it doesn’t count if you only reach the summit, or if you only make it halfway around the lake. I also try to ensure that the people I travel with are equipped for and trained to deal with various emergencies.

Though sometimes perilous, the state of disconnection doesn’t always involve life-and-death drama.

One of my first wilderness experiences involved a 110-mile kayak trip with two other paddlers down the St. John River, the Northeast’s last wild river that runs along the Maine-Canadian border.

When we left, the Red Sox had a 14½-game lead over the Yankees. By the time we pulled into the town of Allagash, the Bronx Bombers had cut the gap in half. The Yanks then went on to capture the pennant and eventually won the World Series.

So, depending on your team allegiances, not knowing what’s going on back home can be a good or bad thing, I guess.