When the silence is the solitude

Even when you're miles away from the nearest car, it seems like there's always a bird, the low hum of a beehive, a breath of wind, the whispered roar of a jet miles overhead. But up here, when the wind died and the finches flew away: nothing. The sudden stillness wasn’t a surprise - the silence, while striking, was expected. What surprised me was the rush of solitude. I hadn’t seen or spoken to another human since the previous afternoon, so I was well aware of being alone. But it was then, in that total silence, that the solitude was most tangible. 

Sit with that empty space

You go out in the wilderness and prepare to think important, productive thoughts about what you want to be when you grow up and the kind of mark you're leaving on the world. And sometimes instead of thinking all those thoughts, you sit for hours and let your mind rest, empty except for the wind and the stream and the raucous chatter of Clark's nutcrackers. And that's okay.

Sometimes you have to sit with that empty space, become familiar with it, before you can fill it.