Authors: Sara Maitland
I experienced a fierce
joyful
… joyful what? … neither pride nor triumph felt like the right word. Near the end of Ursula le Guin’s
The Farthest Shore
(the third part of the
Earthsea Trilogy
) Arren, the young prince-hero, who has with an intrepid courage born of love rescued the magician Sparrowhawk, and by implication the whole of society, from destruction, wakes alone on the western shore of the island of Selidor. ‘He smiled then, a smile both sombre and joyous, knowing for the first time in his life, and alone, and unpraised and at the end of the world, victory.’ That was what I felt like, alone on An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, The Winged Isle. I felt an enormous victorious YES to the world and to myself. For a short while I was absorbed in joy. I was dancing my joy, dancing, and flowing with energy. At one point I grabbed my jacket, plunged out into the wind and the storm. It was physically impossible to stay out for more than about a minute because the wind and rain were so strong and I came back in soaked from even that brief moment; but I came in energised and laughing and exulting as well. I was both excited
and
contented. This is a rare and precious pairing. I knew, and wrote in my journal, that this would not last, but it did not matter. It was NOW. At the moment that now, and the enormous wind, felt like enough. Felt like more than enough.
And once again I am not alone. Repeatedly, in every historical period, from every imaginable terrain, in innumerable different languages and forms, people who go freely into silence come out with slightly garbled messages of intense
jouissance
, of some kind of encounter with nature, their self, their God, or some indescribable source of power.
Now look at the eight particular experiences I have described here: an intensification of both physiological and psychological sensation; disinhibition; a sense of ‘givenness’ or connection; auditory hallucinations – voice hearing of a rather particular kind; boundary confusions; an exhilarating consciousness of being at risk, in peril; ineffability and bliss.
I would not want to suggest that this was a definitive list. But even as it stands, it does seem to me that to describe these experiences in terms of ‘lack’ or ‘absence’ is simply stupid.
Frank Mulville, yet another single-handed sailor, in an article entitled ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Sailor’, wrote about an experience that seems to hold together all the elements of silence that I have been so busy separating out. Mulville got ‘blissed out’ (his term) sailing single-handed in the Caribbean, in love with his ship and with the long silences. He wanted to see her and himself from the outside, and so one calm day, although the boat was under sail, he attached himself to a long rope, let himself down into the water and floated away.
It made me feel quite dizzy to look at her. She seemed the most lovely thing dipping in and out of sight as she mounted the long Atlantic swell and then slipped into the hollows. This, it struck me was the supreme moment of my life; I had never achieved anything to equal it and I was never likely to again. This was the ultimate experience … it was my dream and I had it. Why not let go of the rope? To melt into the sea at this apex of experience, was the only thing left. Nothing that could happen in the future could better this. Why not trump the ace and walk out?
I stayed at the end of the rope for a while and then I began to get frightened – not so much at what might happen to me but at what I might do to myself … I glanced deeply into the womb of the sea watched the shafts of sunlight as they spent their energy uselessly in its density … I slipped the bowline off my shoulders and hung for an instant on the very end of the rope – my fingers grasping the bare end of life itself – then I hauled myself back hand over hand. When I stood on the firm familiar deck I swore I would never do this thing again. I was running with sweat and shaking all over.
40
This does not feel like loss or absence to me. Driving south from Skye I knew that it was not possible for me to sustain that sort of silence for very much longer than the six weeks I had; but I also knew that it was one of the most significant things I have ever done. It was interesting, demanding, exciting, good fun and deeply joyful. It has informed my choices and my life ever since. I have been engaged trying to build those experiences into a daily and sustainable lifestyle. Skye is both a benchmark and a launch pad for much of my present life.
1
I am rashly assuming that readers can remember Enid Blyton’s ‘Famous Five’ stories. I owe this accurate and evocative description to Ford Hickson.
2
Byrd,
Alone
, chapter 1.
3
There is a fine selection of photos of the cottage and the locality at www.drynoch.demon. co. uk.
4
Revelation 14:2.
5
There is a biography of Tenzin Palmo: Vicky Mackenzie,
A Cave in the
Snow
(Bloomsbury, 1998).
6
John Hunt,
Ascent of Everest
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1953).
7
Quoted in Fergus Fleming,
Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps
(Granta, 2001).
8
He later explained this nausea by saying that he ‘had made a pact with the gods’ in reparation for what he saw as a bad and dishonest previous book, and felt strongly that circumnavigating for a possible cash prize would sully the whole enterprise.
9
Robin Knox-Johnston,
A World of My Own
(reissued Adlard Coles Nautical, 2004).
10
Byrd,
Alone
, foreword to UK edition, p. 6.
11
Many of the Desert Fathers paid for their few necessities by weaving baskets from rushes and selling them in the local villages. Given how many hermits there were at some points, and how few villages, I have this pleasing image of infuriated but affectionate villagers reluctantly buying yet more redundant baskets because of their concern for the well-being of the monks, their small houses or tents crammed with useless baskets, much the way twenty-first-century parents go on sticking their children’s nursery artwork on to the fridge.
12
Byrd,
Alone
, p. 83.
13
Christiane Ritter,
Woman in the Polar Night
, trans. Jane Degras (Allen & Unwin, 1956).
14
Quoted in Fleming,
Killing Dragons
.
15
Jon Krakauer,
Into the Wild
(Villard, 1996), p. 138.
16
Nicholas Wollaston:
The Man on the Ice Cap: The Life of Augustine Courtauld
(Constable, 1980).
17
Journal, Day 15.
18
Observer
, 10.2.2002, p. 9.
19
Peter Nichols,
A Voyage for Madmen
(Profile Books, 2001), p. 214.
20
Bernard Moitessier,
The Long Way
, (Doubleday, 1971), p. 164.
21
Journal, Day 9.
22
Journal, Day 27.
23
Charles Lindbergh,
Spirit of St Louis
(Scribner’s, 1953), p. 109.
24
Nichols,
Voyage for Madmen
.
25
William Howell,
White Cliffs to Coral Reef
, (Odhams, 1957).
26
Ann Davison,
Last Voyage
, Heinemann, 1951.
27
William Wordsworth, ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’,
Lyrical Ballads
(1800), line 7–8.
28
Byrd,
Alone
, p. 85.
29
Song of the Siren – The World About Us
, BBC television, 1971.
30
Moitessier,
The Long Way
, pp. 101–4.
31
Ritter,
Woman in the Polar Night
.
32
Geoffrey Williams,
Sir Thomas Lipton Wins
(P. Davis, 1969), p. 115.
33
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
La Nouvelle Héloïse
(1761), quoted in Fleming,
Killing Dragons
, (2002), p. 90.
34
Jacques Yves Cousteau,
The Silent World
(Hamish Hamilton, 1953).
35
Goutran de Procius,
Kablina
, quoted in Max Picard,
The World of
Silence
, trans. Stanley Godman (London, 1948).
36
The hideous consequences of this effect are detailed in Jon Krakauer’s
Into Thin Air
(Random House, 1997), his account of a disastrous twenty-four hours on Everest in which nine people were killed, almost entirely through ‘disinhibited behaviour’ of one sort or another.
37
John Dennis, letter, 1688, quoted in Robert Macfarlane,
Mountains of
the Mind: A History of a Fascination
(Granta, 2003), p. 73.
38
Macfarlane,
Mountains of the Mind
.
39
Exodus 3:1–6.
40
Frank Mulville, ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Sailor’,
Yachting
Monthly
, no. 132, May 1972, pp. 686–8.
*
It is usually ‘him’ – the sort of adventures we learn about have, until very recently, been undertaken most frequently by men. This makes the few accounts by women particularly interesting.
*
This is a bit more complicated than it looks, because of the social and communal aspects, including nudity, with which bathing was associated in Roman society. It is possible that Jerome just stopped ‘going to the baths’ rather than that he never washed.
*
The ‘pale’ in this well-known phrase was the ‘fence’ (actual or notional) that marked the limits of English jurisdiction – particularly in Ireland. Within the pale there was law and order; beyond, it was barbaric, lawless, unlicensed.
T
here appears to be something missing in this account of my sojourn in Skye. It is all very positive and glorious, yet we live in a society that
knows
that silence is dangerous. When I talked about my plans both before I went and since returning, the most common responses have been foreboding concern – ‘Are you sure you will be all right? Don’t you think that is rather foolhardy? Sara, do be careful.’ As a society we will do anything we can to avoid silence at every level. Silence is terrifying, unnatural and drives people mad. Silence is supposed to be very dark, very heavy.
To be honest, after I returned to Weardale I felt I had missed something – that I had not encountered fully the promised ‘dark side’ of silence. I had indeed had some depressed, angry and destabilised moments and even days, but in a sense they were not different in quality or intensity from the same sorts of days and moments that I experience anyway. In fact, they were probably fewer and milder than normal, because I did not have to deal with other people and their frustrating or inconvenient demands. These sensations, unlike the positive ones, did not feel specific to silence.
I only had one seriously frightening experience that I would interpret as directly related to silence while I was in Skye. One morning I decided that I would take a walk from Luib to Loch Slapin – from sea to sea along a well-marked track between the mountains. From one of the tourist pamphlets in the house I had learned that quite recently some Bronze Age remains had been
discovered here, evidence of the oldest inhabitation of the island, and that piqued my curiosity. It was a strange day, very still with no wind. I left the car and walked up the path, and after a couple of hundred yards it turned round a knoll and I walked into
nowhere
. It was a tight, steep-sided glen that I could not see out of. Nowhere. No one. Nothing. ‘Desolate’ suggests something sad – but at that point I had nothing to be sad about and I wasn’t, although the path was really wet and boggy and hard work. It was terribly still and beautiful – but somehow eerie. Soon I came to a little loch with reeds standing in the perfectly clear water, which reflected the hills rising sharply either side – and at first I was enchanted. I could hear, though never see, some small singing birds and I sat beside the water and listened to the silence – and then abruptly, suddenly I was ‘spooked’.