I want to own a cabin far away from everything, so that I may feel the immense solitude of the silent wood around me. I would go there as often as possible to make sense of all of the feverish chaos that is common – welcomed – begged – into every other moment of our lives. There is rarely a break from the thought that I must be doing something, perhaps imparted on all Americans by our Puritan forefathers. Hard work, no questions. I have the impression that we are to explore when we are young, we are to work when we are of age, and then we are to die when the time comes.
It’s unfortunate that more of us do not die young to be reborn with eyes wide open and waiting for the moments in life that make life so precious. It is clear, from what I have seen of the world, that there is a great deal of time wasted on things insignificant and hurtful, and that it would do us – as both a civilized society and as a brazenly savage species – a great favor to disband from one another and discard, if only for a long moment, of our tether to technologies’ dark side.
There is no more nourishing retreat than quiet personal reflection – looking into the space of my own head until it is as familiar as the feeling of returning to my childhood home. I can think of no better place from which to do this than a lonely cabin hidden by tall evergreens and light gray morning fog. I would walk to it, open the door, leave my shoes in the corner of a dirty mud room, sit in a comfortable rocking chair next to a plain table and stare out the window.
I would stare. I would breath. And I would feel free.