SOLITUDE
The Isolation Blues;
reflections during covid-19
sunday afternoon on the sauna porch It’s the middle of April and this is the first time the thermometer has made it past fifty degrees. (it’s been a long, cold stretch of weather) The sun is shining and the breeze is moving like a small electric fan on low setting oscillating one direction and then the other. I’m sheltered by the surrounding firs and pine and the sauna porch facing west offers a front-row unobstructed view of the meduxnekeag stream. For two weeks after ice out this deferential stream becomes a torrent of irrefutable flow. The typical stream sound you hear from the sauna porch is the gentle trickle of water moving over and around exposed stones as it meanders downstream but today it is a massive rush of water over submerged rock breaking the speed limit if such a thing was posted in the backwoods. The late afternoon sun strikes the front wall of the sauna and warms the rough-cut cedar clapboards; the aroma of warm cedar, weathered stain and spare thoughts. Sitting here with a cup of coffee in hand sun warming my wool shirt and skin the rush of water like it is moving through me i can feel the transmission of spring energy buzzing in my body (or is it the caffeine?). I could sit here for however long it takes and even then i think i could sit longer and i wonder if this is time well spent? Not in the sense of how productive this is or is there something else i should be doing but what is this sensation of me sitting here the noticing of just what’s here? The current of world affairs is turbulent and uncertain (who knows what will happen next?) but i sit here as the waters sweep by and I feel the movement of nature and humanity. I can’t see what’s coming next but it always comes… I look up from my cup of coffee; two kayakers paddling by the sauna a partridge drumming his wings in the woods.
Life is short is of utmost value and should not be casually squandered. journal entry; April 15, 1997 The only thing you find in solitude is what you brought with you… journal entry; February 9, 1996
Solitude is a simplification. It is an emptying-out of that which was previously filled with personal content, time-fillers, distractions, clutter and congested thinking. In a retreat setting you might be assigned to a small room with basic furniture stripped down to the essentials; no music, no books, no cellphone, no electronic devices (perhaps a notebook). The typical schedule consists of meals, chores, spiritual practice (contemplation, meditation, body practices, journaling), personal hygiene, toilet and sleep. Solitude creates space (interior and exterior) to explore and re-evaluate what is important and what is not. Usually our lives are so busy and over-stocked with interests and activities that there is no room available for something else. It’s the “something else” that contemplative spirituality is most interested in.
Solitude is not about productivity. Keeping busy all the time doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s time well spent (even if you do get a lot accomplished). Thoreau was often criticized by his contemporaries for the time he wasted during the course of his day at Walden Pond. After tending his modest patch of green beans he would sit on the front step of his cabin and contentedly gaze at his beans growing in the friendly sunlight (hours could pass by…). Solitude is about content and quality. Life is such a brief commodity that its management requires careful assessment.
When I was sitting by the stream last Sunday I was not getting anything productive done (or I could have been watching Netflix instead) but I was “spending my time” in a most meaningful way. I am not going to admit how long I sat on the porch, but every minute of such activity is well spent. It is for just such things that Linda and I choose to live in the woods. Life is an amazing and sometimes difficult to predict adventure but live it we must. Live it well.
In the woods,
Dave
April 24, 2020