Quiet
N46° 04.03’, W081° 33.69’—For a moment it was quiet, completely quiet. Not even a bird. Not a ripple in the water. Not a rustle in the trees. The quiet was overwhelming. My senses want to fill in the void. But there is nothing to work with. The space between my ears intensifies. I tell myself not to panic. Soon there will be noise, but there isn’t, so I calm down and watch the silence. In the distance an otter is diving and surfacing. His head is the only thing out of the water and I can see his whiskers move as he munchies on whatever otters munch on. I have to backtrack and say that diving is too active of a word for how the otter arches its back and slides into the water. But that is not correct either. It is already in the water and is going from a nose to a face and then a glistening back and then all that is left to disappear is the tail. A large raptor flies over but there is no noise associated with its transit. Nothing breaks the silence until dinner. And now that that is over I hear the clock tick off the seconds of my life and a white-throated sparrow calls, but now he has even stopped—well almost. Carrie Rose silently sways at anchor maybe 20 to 30 degrees. Occasionally Charlotte turns a page and I feel that my mind needs a sound even as it hopes for silence. No Mozart, no Bach and certainly no Bruckner or Mahler. Sibelius may be acceptable; somehow he captures silence in sound. Then I hear a grunt from the shoreline. An odd bird circles above, a bit like the nighthawks I never see anymore in Chicago. A flutter of wings, and then a short glide and intermittent call; a distinctive call but a call I cannot now describe. Twilight comes and still it is quiet. I have a friend that sailed around the world and recently brought his boat to a marina in Brooklyn of all places. I asked him what is it like and he says, “The noise is deafening.” After today I understand.
East in East-West Channel in McGregor Bay, Ontario
A surprise reveals itself on further inspection. Of course it was interesting from the start, but then we ventured with the dinghy—this time without the motor—into the back bay; an ancient Chinese landscape appears. Packs of lilies float: some just opening, some majestically white with yellow stamens, and below in the tannin-tinted water their siblings start to unfurl and head for the surface.
A loon’s plaintive call breaks the silence, but plaintive makes it sound trivial. It is not. The call is from the main channel where our unpopulated boats swing at anchor. Where is he, oh there he is. He’s just come around a large bare round light brown rock, islet really. Another cry and then he submerges and is lost. Later in the day he will surface outside my pilothouse door larger than life for loons are big birds. This one is at least a yard long, black and stealthy, white priestly collar but with the red beady eyes of a vampire.
The wind gusts from the NNE. We are protected here and barely feel it, but the dinghy does. It pushes us down into a small bay, though not before I misjudge the bottom and put another ding into my Chippendale-like dinghy. I resign myself to this for it verges on stupidity to bring a varnished wood boat into a land of rocks.
This is not a Japanese garden. It is definitely Chinese. The rocks jut out over the water and are made up of vertical striations. Moss and lichens populate every groove and in the low spots the remnants of spring’s iris cluster together. These rocks have grottos and caves in miniature. And though it is peaceful here I can feel the violence of their birth. The molten lava may have cooled billions of years ago but I can still feel the heat. I can see it flowing. Hear it hiss as it hits the water.
It feels violent, an odd reaction to have in such a peaceful place. I feel the earth move without it moving. I feel the lava flow without it flowing. In a few places I see glaciers scrap the surface of the volcanic rock smooth. This is a godly place. It is a place to feel the earth’s origins.
September 2012
