The Sound of Silence

So, yes.   

We went away for more than an overnight for the first time in five years.  Away, away.  With my husband's brother and his wife.  Into the woods, by a lake, twenty-five minutes to the nearest town, many, many minutes from anywhere else.  No TV.  Spotty Internet.  Cell service touchy.  We slept in a cabin, searched out moose and found four, climbed to a ninety-foot waterfall an hour’s hike deep into the forest.  We kayaked for a couple of miles and returned with the wind dead in our faces. We tooled around in a tin motor boat.  We watched a mother duck go after a mink that was threatening one of her babies.  We chased away a red-tailed squirrel that hopped through a hole in the porch door and charged the table where we’d been eating peanuts. We drove twelve miles up a twisting incline, got out to eyes tearing in the wind, to see a 360 degree view.  Mountains.  Lakes.  More trees then we’ve seen in our lifetime. The skeletons of twisted  trees.  Cairns stacked three stones high. Anything higher would blow over.

A week of quiet.  A week of still.

Crackers and cheese with wine out of plastic cups, on a dock overlooking the lake.  Sticky finger S’mores in front of the camp fire. Weather too cool for the katydid’s we’d hear at home.  Even the birds spoke in whispers. 

All the clatter, the beeps, pings, ringtone, cars, trucks, airplanes.  Gone.

Awake by an open window in the middle of the night, I listened to the cry of the loons, convinced the mournful call was nature’s way of feeding our hearts. I got up at five and walked through the dew to catch the sunrise on two mornings so cool, mist rose from the lake.

So quiet.

So still.

A week to last a lifetime.

Home now, we just have to hold on to it.