The hours passed without a single sound. Three fin whales breached near the prow. A black-browed Albatross circled above. My wife and I drifted in a Zodiac raft on a midsummer’s day, glinting emerald, aquamarine, and sapphire-colored walls above sapphire water. We then walked onshore to see thousands of penguins waddling along as leopard seals watched them from the rocks.
What I remember most about my 10-day trip cruise On the Silversea Silver Cloud Around the world Antarctic Peninsula The silence that surrounded us six years ago seemed to go on for miles. There were no sirens or drills. Not even a car alarm was possible. As a result, we became quieter, a silent presence that was more than just an absence.
I travel so that I can get away from my life. And as the world grows ever more clamorous—a phone ringing, my iPad beeping, screens everywhere blaring out the latest news—I long more than ever to cut through the noise and access what feels like my deepest self, the silent being that sits beneath the social one.
I will never forget my arrival at Camp Denali The following are some examples of how to use AlaskaDeep within the 6-million acre Denali National Park & Preserve, and I felt as if it was a faraway planet where the sound didn’t travel. The alpenglow shone over a 36-mile glacier and there was no electricity or running water. She pointed out caribou in a group on a ridge and taught me to read bear scat as she led me through the scarlet-and yellow tundra. In the vast stillness, every detail was so vivid that it sang.
Even in places that are alive with activity and energy, there can be sanctuaries. The first place I went to was New York City, I slipped, by instinct, off busy Fifth Avenue and into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, sensing it would steady me after a series of harrying job interviews, Instantly I felt silenced—by the thick hush, the flickering candles, the proximity of prayer. After I started working on 50th Street full-time, I found that Bryant Park was a great place to relax and catch my breath. When I finally realized that I couldn’t always hear myself thinking (or not thinking) in the city I gave up my dream job to move to the quietest place I had ever experienced: Japan. There is very little noise in suburban trains, even when they are packed.
This trip to the cathedral taught me how escaping the chatter in the world could help me connect with intuitions that are deeper than my surface thought. Last summer, after bumping over a road with barely any paving for 13 miles, I finally reached the Monastery of Christ in the Desert. A Benedictine abbey located near Abiquiu. New Mexico. Since a previous visit to the desert 30 years ago, I’ve been hungry to experience desert quiet again. The German mystic Meister Ehrhart described the Benedictine sanctuary as “the place within the soul where no wounds have been caused.” I entered a world of birdsong, rushing water, and bells. Silence is not what I mean. I am missing all the sounds I hear in my everyday life, running from one appointment to another, and wondering, like T.S. Eliot once asked “Where is the life that we have lost through living?”
