Growing up in the din of California suburbia, an electric buzz seemed endemic to the earth. Traffic seemed a feature as fundamental as air. Other aspects of experience were obscured. Blue skies in summer, untainted by smog? I never even considered the possibility. Moonlight as primary illumination, strong enough to hike by? It wasn’t just that I didn’t experience it. I didn’t even know it existed to experience. Sonic and physical pure open space were beyond me as a child.
Still, genetic memory is a layer far deeper than conscious knowing. It remains present in all of us, and the memories of silence and forests remained present in my youthful form, growing into a yearning that first had no exact expression. I became drawn to distant open green spaces. I longed to reach them in their distance from me, knowing in an undefined way that they were home, even if I’d never known them. I’d stare at pictures of lush groves as I would an alien landscape, yet it was like looking in a mirror. I was seeing my own roots, my home, my lands of origin. I’d simply never been there yet.
I’d never been to silence either, not really. It was shocking to finally turn twenty under an Oregon forest sky, blue in August, without electricity or other city to impede. (Without running water or telephones either, but that’s another story.) It was incredibly, deliciously quiet. It was a revelation that millions, perhaps billions of modern humans have yet to have.
Peaceful, however? Not necessarily. I quickly learned that external silence gave space for inner voices to play—and play loudly, they often did. In the silence, obsessive thoughts became larger and more repetitive. The scale of dreams and feelings climbed wildly. And without electricity, no recorded music or television could block them out. Yet that did not keep music from rising to a crashing din within. I spent most of that first silent summer with a small phrase of music in my head, looping endlessly, that I almost knew but could not quite recall. I could hear the guitar, the harmonies, but what was the next line? What was the song? It nearly drove me mad, until I was later back in college in California and randomly heard the answer playing across the courtyard. (“St. Elmo’s Fire” by Brian Eno, from Another Green World. How appropriate.)
Having stillness and silence nearly bring me madness instead of peace was a revelation of its own; one I saw play out in many minds years later, when I was resident artist at Wilbur Hot Springs, one of the quietest and most special places I’ve yet experienced, again without electricity or distraction. Over and over, people would arrive, thinking they had found paradise—then discover all their unheard feelings rushing up at them with unexpected intensity. It’s only in silence that you discover what the city has hidden from you, not only in the world, but within your own heart. For those able to handle the inner clamor, the result is transformative. Those buried emotions can be exhumed at last, their ghosts released from wandering through the catacombs of the soul. Eventually, true quiet does return. Eventually, tranquility that’s real settles in. Finally, a walk under that pure moonlight without the intrusion of streetlights or the torture of inner distraction.
Are you really ready to be this alive again? That’s the question the forests seem to ask me now, as I walk within them daily, home at last and unable to distance myself from the challenges of silence. Are you able to handle the cuts of sharp inner edges? The trees dare me. Can you learn to release the thoughts which begin again as soon as they end? Only sometimes, so far.
It’s the same internally and externally. There may be fewer noises out here, but each individual one then stands out. It’s harder to ignore them. I feel like the baseball player who can more easily shut out the drone of a large crowd than a small one, because in the latter the individual heckler’s voice can slice right through. Yet I love the forest acoustics—the way an owl’s soft evening call resonates in return through the trees. I love knowing what my quietest discontents are, alongside my deepest joys. I love knowing exactly what the same trees look like, day after day after day. They stand there without motion or complaint, with a steadiness our own souls will never know. Silence? They know it better than we ever will. They practice it constantly. I admire them for it. And thirty years since I first saw them standing where they still are now, on this land, they’re far taller and stronger, and they’ve never once bragged about it, or even thought to. I can only do my imperfect best to emulate them in their silence. I can only still my mind once in awhile, and tonight if I’m lucky, I’ll do so enough for a peaceful night’s sleep. It’s beautifully dark, the moon has disappeared for the month, and instead the magic of night reveals the true stars. It’s silent, just as I will try to be, though tonight the noise of spirit is roaring inside once more.
