Find your white space
Reasons to live on an island, Part 2
Pender Island is quiet. In a heavy snowfall this past winter, my daughter, who lives a two-hour ferry ride away in Vancouver, texted me how wonderfully silent it was in the city. “No highway sounds which you can usually hear from outside.” The body feels quiet with a sense of relief. In a recent study, scientists found people respond physiologically to silence the same way they do to music. Silence isn’t just an absence of noise, it’s active.
Years ago, my family and I lived in Ladner, on a busy street across the Fraser River. I made a beautiful garden. We spent a lot of time outside, but even in the backyard with the house to block noise, a hundred-year-old pear tree, hedging, and the bright perennials to distract us, the sound of traffic was never-ending.
Several times a year, we’d visit my husband’s Aunt May in Campbell River. Weather permitting, it became a cherished tradition for us all to pack a picnic which we’d take to Rebecca Spit on Quadra Island. After we’d eaten, I’d leave everyone for half an hour and go sit on the opposite beach, fifty feet away, and look out toward Desolation Sound. I felt like my body was a sponge, soaking up the stillness, the sheen of water, the distant mountains. That silence had to last me until the next visit. It wasn’t until I was there, and could relax, that I’d remember how deeply restorative I found this quiet.
Living on Pender, the minute it gets warm enough, I spend hours of the day on my deck. From my chaise, I look out onto my cliff garden, a twelve-foot drop now draped with cotoneasters, an evergreen groundcover, and the firs and cedars in the park beyond. I work at my computer, read, and often just drink tea and look out. A few years ago, a friend crotched a blanket and gave it to me for Christmas. I use this a lot in spring and fall to keep warm
Today it’s too cold for me to sit out. But just hanging laundry to dry on the deck, I heard barred owls calling, two of them. One did the classic Whuck whuck wahoo, and a deeper tone answered Who who. Earlier, when the dog and I were coming up the hill from our walk, I heard a Canada goose make a squorbbling sound; that was new. Canada geese are all over the island but I can’t imagine where they’d be hanging out in the park. This wasn’t the flying-overhead Ah-honka, honka, it was more like the soft sound I’ve heard geese make swimming parallel to the shore. I heard northern flickers, lots of them, with their See-uhr-Seer-uhr call that’s almost a whistle. Isn’t this magic?
Background soundscape to living on a Gulf island. Today no chainsaws in the distance; that’s also a feature of rural life.
Who am I in the quiet? Who are you?
In poetry, we talk about white space, how much the layout in say, stanzas, affects the readers’ perception of the words on the page. In living, isn’t silence the same? It’s restorative. I can look at myself in the abstract and the quiet is like the border around a picture. Do I think? Some of the time. I’m not meditating, my eyes are open. But the air speaks to me. The trees do; I can feel the ones around me have finally had enough rain and are satisfied. In August, when they’re stressed and dry, they’re telling me a another story just from the way they look. And if I hadn’t spent a lot of time gazing at them during different seasons, I wouldn’t understand.
When I’m sad, I order myself to get up and go outside. Often it can be to cut firewood for my woodstove. Sometimes my only agenda is to leave the never-ending laundry that comes with operating a rental cottage, and get more in the sparkle-groove. So I may prune some elderberries with winter die-back, check the mail, which involves a walk out the gate to the other side of the road, or I’ll just sit on the front steps. Kira will come and lean against me. I give her some nice scritches under the chin and think for the thousandth time how blessed I am to have this oversize Muppet-looking creature to keep me company.
When we’re working and allow ourselves to get subsumed by busy busy busy, this precious white space, the quiet that’s a gift from the universe, gets overlooked, at least by me. So now, from my chair in the living room, I swivel and look out at the turquoise bird bath by the cliff garden and the big yew tree I think of as the genius loci of this place. I look out and breathe and know, yeah, I’m not doing much of anything here but it feels like a singularly important nothing. It’s a process I don’t understand but am grateful for. It makes me recall Julian of Norwich saying, “All is well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Happy Easter, to all of you from whatever tradition you are from! The word itself comes from a pagan goddess of fertility and spring whose holiday this originally was, Ostara, Eastre or Eostre. My version of fertility is that last week a friend came here for a writing retreat and I managed to get back into the world of Satter Island, Geranium Lodge and my beloved character Jorrie. I’ve picked up work on her story; she does get herself into trouble!
The blessings of white space be upon you! And may quiet and bird song power your day.
FOR MY PENDER PALS, PLEASE COME OUT ON WEDNESDAY AT 1:00 TO THE LIBRARY! IT’LL BE A DELICIOUS SMORGASBORD OF READINGS!
Thanks, Leslie! I love the idea of the physical situation bringing you gratitude every morning.
Thanks, Sandy! Your words put a smile on my face.