Walking Into Silence

I get to raise my kids in a place where the trees outnumber the people, and the only predators worth fearing walk on four legs.

Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

I get up way too early.

It’s probably because Dandelion is ready to be loved up - even at 4am. Knowing there is someone on four legs excited to start her day with me is a powerful draw. Grabbing my glasses and phone I slowly make my way out of the cat refuge my bedroom has become. They’re not happy I’m leaving, especially because I’ll be giving attention to that thing with big teeth and a wagging tail like a drunk python that all the humans seem so obsessed with.

“We’ll be right here…all day…waiting for you to return… old man…” Gotta watch your back with those cats.

Dandelion has just gotten Truly up, trying to nose her way out of the bedroom they share at night.

“Dandi…mmm…back….flmbbbbbmmm…bed NOW!”

Truly is flopping back and forth, half conscious, trying to restore the perfect equation where sleep = girl + 4 stuffed animals + 2 comforters + dog.

“True, go back to bed. It’s close enough to my time to get up. I’ll take Dandi.”
”Mgmffff!” She’ll be out in seconds after burying herself in comforters.

Dandi and I greet each other in the dark hallway with the affection of two people exiled to different lands with no way to communicate. She licks, we nuzzle, I pet. Her long body tries to wrap around me. Wandering out back to pee we’re greeted by the absolute quiet of our high desert neighborhood. Winter has faded just a little, it’s above freezing. I can stand in silence, the cloudless night sky greeting us with her radiance. Too many stars to count. We are so wealthy.

Both of my kids are country mice. I never would have guessed my children would turn out that way. I stumbled into country living while at college, being lucky enough to go to schools nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Once seduced by living in the woods, it’s difficult to leave.

I get to raise my kids in a place where the trees outnumber the people, and the only predators worth fearing walk on four legs.

The most common danger the kids face is turning a corner and coming face to face with fully grown Buck. They don’t always like our company, especially when their rack is all the way in. Next comes Coyotes and Mountain Lions, but they are rarely seen. Coyotes are often heard, Mountain lions show up on game cams but otherwise are ghosts. Wolves are still far away, but there is a pack named for my favorite local river. It’s growing and expanding its territory not too far from here. I’ve taught the kids to study our pets; the cats, our last dog Bella, and now Dandelion when they’re out in the world.

“Remember when we were at that park in Santa Cruz, by that stream as the sun was setting? Bella’s hackles went up and she started pacing back and forth like she was worried?”
”Yep.”
”And what did we do?”
”We went home right away!”
”Thats right, our animals almost always know something dangerous is nearby long before we do.”

I think its good to raise kids to understand that our position at the top of the food chain is circumstantial, and circumstances can easily change. Humility is the better part of intelligence when dealing with nature.

Dandelion and I amble back to the couch in the living room and lay down together. Though animals always eat first in our house, I refuse to feed anyone before 5am. Months later, Dandelion still hasn’t read the memo about daylight savings, so she insists it’s time to eat. Once I pull a blanket up and a pillow over my head she gets the message. She’ll have to wait for breakfast.

And I get a second sleep curled up with a deliciously furry 1 year old.

When my kids feel restless they get to go outside and just wander. Tadg might go for a walk, Truly will build something, or invent an adventure where Dandelion is the main character. Even if Tadg sticks ear buds in as he walks, even if she’s singing to Dandelion, they are immersed in a silence that is vast. There are no people nearby to worry about, no complicated images of modern life for their brains to process.

They get to walk into silence so they can hear whats going on inside themselves.

That is the great challenge of adolescence in our age: for young people to be able to know and invest in what is going on inside their own being. It matters less to me the nature of what they’re feeling and knowing within, as their ability to stay in touch with it and communicate it somehow to the world.

They need to be fully invested in conjuring the person they are becoming.

That has become my point of orientation in so many ways, and not just with my own children. How is this person I’m dealing with and how am I able to explore this vastness available to each one of us? Is there enough room in this moment to explore the adventure of being fully alive?

We each deserve daily invitations to experience those places within, and see how they resonate with all that is without. Each of us is gifted with a wealth of endless landscapes within ourselves, so many ways to access the fullness of being, yet our culture seems to offer so few opportunities to step into those spaces. We are endlessly enticed to catch an invisible train thats perpetually leaving the station without us.

More and more of my days are made up of these spaces between work or doing things with the kids. Its not that those moments happen more often, but rather that I’m better able to sink into them. Having a dog like Dandelion doesn’t hurt. She’s always bringing me back here, to the now, with its endless song of being and becoming.

Yesterday my wings were made of water,
flowing, spraying, and reshaping
as I darted through the desert brush and Juniper trees.
Maybe today my wings will be made of paper
so I can write wishes for you on them
in a singing language only children know
so you might learn to fly like me.