In my thirties, running a manufacturing and design company while parenting two small children at times drained my physical and mental energy. My mind would become a whirlpool of bills to pay, payroll to meet every Friday, national and internal marketing travel, worrying about a company with a red bottom line, kids to get to school and their activities, shopping, cooking, on and on. I discovered a way to renew my self-esteem and energy—to be completely alone from time to time. But how? Where? I loved to camp, but the summer was my busiest time at work and it was too crowded anywhere nearby.
Schoodic Point in the summer had become a favorite place to take my kids. I wondered what it would be like in the winter? Who would be camping in the middle of a frigid Maine winter out on Schoodic Point? Perfect.
Bill Moss and I had done some family winter camping with our young children when we were a cohesive family unit to write stories for the Ford Times Magazine. That camping didn’t seem too difficult, except changing the diapers of a young child bundled in several layers of clothing during a snowstorm.
So off I went alone for the first time with our four-season Olympic Tent, a lantern, a Primus cookstove, food, a couple of cooking utensils, kindling and small firewood, a below-zero sleeping pad, myself well-layered and padded and a book to read. It snowed, the wind howled and shook my tent. My mind was anything but quiet.
What if my tent blows away and I freeze to death before I can get back to the car? No one will know where to find me. (No cell phones then.) What if a bear smelled my dinner and comes here to check it out? What if…what if…
Needless to say, I also didn’t do much reading or resting. As I climbed out of my tent in the early morning sunrise, things had changed abruptly with the promise of a blue, clear sunny day. Waking up to that beauty not only took my breath away, but cleared my head of how good I felt. Alone. Not a soul or four-legged creature in sight. The ocean, oblivious of the prior night, moved slowly under a small layer of sea smoke.
I made a fire, boiled some coffee and sat on my folding stool to warm my hands and simply observe. My business far away. Kids with babysitter. Creditors floating away. I let my negative thoughts be taken, one by one, with the waves, reaching and receding, until my mind was clear and still. After that time, when possible, this trip and tent became my sanctuary, repeated again and again, my solitude with Nature. And I would return to home refreshed and inspired to get things done, one thing at a time.
On one such occasion, I had driven to Schoodic Point from my office after work one night. I woke up the next morning to find large ice pieces washed up and piled like children’s blocks on the shore. Some were three or four feet deep, square and rectangular. The bright sun dancing on and through them. A spectrum of colors dappled the stones on the beach and water as it washed onto the beach. I was mesmerized and couldn’t believe my eyes, willing them not to blink, afraid the spectacle would suddenly disappear.
There’s not much to do when winter camping alone except walk and read, but this day I spent the time sitting on a rock, watching the waves lap against the ice and, eventually, as the tide turned, taking most of the blocks back out to sea.
The quiet was resounding, unbroken except for the cry of a lonely sea gull or the constant smack of the waves. A natural and automatic urge to hear something, anything—music, voices a motor running—only resolved into failure, the sound of nothing. It’s at this time I would feel at one with myself. Grateful for the solitude. Feeling the judgmental noises of my inner echo chamber ebbing away with the tide.
Truly seeking and loving solitude is the highest form of cleansing. As Wendell Berry stated, “…true solitude is found in the world places, where one is without human obligation—the places where one’s inner voices become audible.” It’s simply a way to find one’s most authentic self.
Not everyone can be alone for any length of time. Hermann Hesse had insisted that solitude took courage. Kahlil Gibran, wrote in The Prophet, “There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.”
As a child, I was alone a lot of the time. Yes, there were moments I felt lonely, but there were many other instances when I used the time to listen and watch what was around me. Fortunately, I was brought up in rural farm country where nature’s phenomena of plants, trees and all living things were abundant.
I don’t advise only solitude. We need balance. At least, I do. But, I can seek and feel those benefits of solitude. With ease and without effort.
