There is a place on the Onkaparinga River, just past the chattering rapids, just beyond the clamouring spindrifts where the currents and the cataracts copulate, where the water makes no noise. Most hikers do not spend much time in this silent place. Their eyes, ears and thoughts are on far busier vistas - perhaps waterfalls around the next corner, or billowing trees swinging in the wind. No, most people do not pause at the still place where the eddies have turned and flipped making it seem as if the river is running backwards.
I wondered to myself at that moment why we don't stop in these quiet places. Is it because we are so captivated by movement and sound that we cannot be bothered to stop? Or, is it because the silence speaks louder to the mortal soul, whispering, ever so slightly, that the river of time is as unstoppable as the Onkaparinga?
In this wider place, the quiet seemed to catch the hands of time and slow them down, and I was grateful. I was thankful that I could find refuge in the wall of silence and think.
Just think.
This inability to pause is a product of the world in which we live. The human species alternates between needing space and needing attention. We withdraw into the cocoon we've spun, a coffin of self-interest, fed intravenously by the internet while excreting the byproducts of our neuroses - these unconscious and automatic ways in which we attempt to deal with our individual and collective anxieties. We distract ourselves from the knowledge that none of this, and none of us, is permanent. Through the manipulation of endorphins, or dopamine, entertainment, sex, drugs and rock and roll, we wend our way through life pushing noisily from one thing to the next but often missing the very thing that makes life worth living.
Meaning.
We miss it. In our constant search for adventure, the longest pause we take is for a selfie on top of Blueberry Hill where we've been searching for a thrill that was never up there in the first place. The thrill is actually in the valley, in the wild silence, where our thoughts and imaginations are given room to grow.
You see, we've tamed the towns and the cities and the urban wastelands. Inside the city limits, almost all things are controlled, from what we eat to what we wear, what we say to what we see. The limitations placed upon our thoughts are a weedmat for what we believe. They actually produces the very things we are most anxious about:
I am alone. I am valueless. Life has no meaning.
Yet when we push down into the gorges of our life, pausing, yes, to see the rapids and the foaming beauty brought about by the recent rains, we could enter the wilderness of silence. Here, we can imagine the moment of creation, the beauty of the human soul and how much better life is finding meaning.
I have people to walk with. I have abilities and talents that other people need. There is a greater good in the world than the parameters we've been given. Suddenly, I realize that I don't need noise. I don't need the next best thing, or see what's around the corner. I suddenly understand, that this second in which I live is permanent and fixed and I can find beauty in it. Whether I am happy or in pain is irrelevant.
Our rapidly moving world which never halts, never breaks off its endless march to be more efficient, pushes us to the tenuous limits of our exhaustion and we wonder, 'Why am I always tired?' Isn't it because we never stop not only to smell the roses, but their beautiful cousins next door? If I never get off the treadmill, I'll never rest.
So today, as we walked back from that place on the Onkaparinga River, that stretch beyond the big boulder where the brown water seemed to flow backwards, I felt better. I went into the wild silence and found rest.
Where is your place of wild silence?
