Linda and I were driving down the long, narrow entry to the lighthouse property last evening as the local sheriff was exiting it after a routine visit. We stopped and chatted awhile and he commented that we were the only ones staying the winter on the entire stretch of land known locally as Land’s End. And I simply replied that it suited us perfectly since we celebrate the solitude of our secluded location.
All of which got me thinking about how much we savor silence. I even dare say that aside from the phenomenal views of our seaside perch, the quiet is what we most crave about our life here on the coast of Maine. Now that the museum and giftshop are closed for the season, we literally have this entire spit of land all to ourselves much of the time we are at home. People often ask us if it ever gets lonely out here, to which we always answer, there is a big difference between being alone and lonely.
As Doris Grumbach wrote in her thought-provoking book Fifty Days of Solitude, “Without the distractions of other persons, without the extraneous sounds of their voices and my own, I felt not a noisy landscape of the mind but a still life.” Ah, that “still life” is what resonates so much with us. It reminds me of a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery that was a favorite of none other than Mister Fred Rogers: “What is essential is invisible to the eyes” (and ears).
In an increasingly noisy world we all need places to which we can escape from the cacophony bombarding us from all sides. Whether it is the quiet car on the commuter train, the reading room of the local library, or the cell-free area of the corner café, I encourage you to find yourself a place of refuge to be alone with your thoughts and dream of what makes you smile. Even better yet, venture out of doors in your search for solitary silence.
“Do you dare to live with…the solitary quiet? Above all, the quiet, for the quiet cannot be borne by most people. It savors of emptiness and idleness; it makes people nervous. Nothing is happening. How are we to know that we are alive in the midst of silence?” writes Baron Wormser in The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet’s Memoir of Living Off the Grid. And I close with a favorite quote of mine by Blaise Pascal: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”