Re-assimilation

For a week in Maine, every day began in what I could only call silence, not pure silence that can only be found in a padded room whose only purpose is to nullify sound, but silence of the natural kind, a silence filled only with wildlife and possibly the rustling of another human’s sleeping bag nearby. Its the silence of a breeze rustling the alder leaves, and then fading back to nothing. Summer in Maine sees the sky begin to shake off its blanket of darkness well before the 4 o’clock hour, and for an early riser like myself, this afforded me ample opportunity to engulf myself in the aforementioned silence. It was almost as if I could hear myself thinking, my thoughts seeming to echo without the artificial noise I was so accustomed to as a backdrop. Every twig that I snapped preparing to light a fire for coffee first thing in the fading darkness seemed to me like a firecracker being set off. It sounded as if I was the intruder at times, but then I’d stop, and listen and hear….almost nothing, except maybe the lone loon trumpeting its eerie call across the water. There was a brief period most mornings where even I would awaken before the smaller wildlife of the forest, the squirrels and chipmunks still curled in their dens, and I could sit and just exist.

After a week of morning silence, even during the day most artificial noise being absent, it seemed that thought flowed more freely, there was less distraction, and everything was simpler. Knowing there was no cell service, phones became useful for only one thing, taking pictures, and I got a glimpse of what life must have been like, and still could be, for those either living long ago or for those who choose to live in the wilderness where the air is crisp and void of diesel and gas fumes. Life may be simpler in many ways, but I’m sure it presents its challenges to those who choose to brave that way of life. Catching a week long glimpse into part of what it could be was enthralling, even if I knew that it would come to an end, my life amidst the hustle and bustle of shoreline CT, wedged in a corridor of traffic and human density and above all excessive noise, was awaiting my imminent return.

And so return I did, my responsibility to return 7 scouts in one piece taking precedent. It was time though. A week long vacation just paddling down a river was an otherworldly experience, one that far exceeded any expectation that I initially had. The profound serenity and peace that could be found everywhere was astounding, and I drank it all in, bottling as much as I could in my mind to drink from when necessary. It was a stark contrast then, when not 24 hours after pulling out of the river, we began encountering our first bits of traffic as we traveled home, cars clogging the highway, slowing forward movement to a crawl, and it was then that I began to dream of that quiet river, the Allagash, to bring me some peace as we drove. And for the most of the drive, I just sat and napped, my co-driver taking most the drive home as I had taken most of the drive up. Even with the building traffic, the influx of people everywhere, there was still beauty to be found, I just had to look a little harder to find it. Glancing up a river we were crossing on the highway, I caught sight of a lone rowboat, marooned on its starboard side in the tidal scrum of low tide, waiting for the waters return to allow to pull at its mooring, awaiting its human to take it somewhere, anywhere away from where it was. And so I also awaited the next time I could escape into nature and cast away the noise and scrum for a bit of dirt and rock under my feet with a canopy of dense trees far overhead.