Solitude Soliloquy

Solitude has nothing to do with loneliness. There have been some short periods of solitude in my life that simply just happened, they usually involved being on the water or in the mountains. These were not occasions where I specifically sought solitude. Solitude sometimes just happens.

It was a cold, rainy, winter Saturday in Seattle, not something unusual. And while Blue Eyes and I lived in a cozy little Craftsman on Hamlin Street close to the University, I was feeling housebound. I called my neighbor Will and asked if he wanted to go paddling. I got a reluctant yes.

We hauled our sea kayaks down the alley behind our homes to Lake Washington, paddled around to The Cut and then on to Lake Union. Let me explain that we had all the right gear including full wet suits, rain jackets, water-tight spray skirts, and pogies to keep our hands warm.

Will was a materials engineer at Boeing. It would be hard to find a kinder or more gentle person. But also smart, analytical, precise, and unafraid to state his opinion. We had paddled together for over a year, including Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

We stopped in the middle of Lake Union. He looked over at me through rain-splattered glasses from under the hood of his dripping jacket.

Will had almost zero body fat. I had more than my share. He got cold easily even in a wetsuit sitting inside a dry boat, and I didn’t.

“This is generally unpleasant,” he said.

“You mean it sucks?”

“That too.”

“You headed back?”

“Yes,” he said as he turned his kayak back in the direction of The Cut.

“Careful under the Montlake Bridge— you are hard to see.”

“You too.”

I sat there in my kayak with the paddle across my spray skirt. I could hear and see other boats on the lake. It is worth noting that sea kayakers in 17-foot sleek boats, barely as wide as a paddler’s shoulders, have an internal radar in their brain that is always searching for bigger boats. Way in the distance I could hear some slight traffic noise, but mostly I heard the lake lapping on the sides of my boat, the rain hitting the hood of my jacket, and my own thoughts.

The boat weathercocked into the slight breeze and I just sat there absolutely lost in thought. I have no memory of what roamed through my head. What I remember is the clarity of my thinking. That once alone, the solitude opened my brain from the everyday to just me, by myself thinking. Solitude is clarity.

* * *

By my nature, I am a dawdler. This drives hiking partners nuts. They always want to get somewhere to see or do something. I join them because I love their company, and I too want to get somewhere to see or do something. Eventually. No rush.

This means that over the years I have spent a good deal of time hiking trails by myself lost in thought. It was early fall, a perfect day in the High Country. The air temperature was in the sixties and there was a breeze that moved the pines around just enough to make a slight wispy sound, but not enough to make the trees creak. I was with John on the South St. Vrain Trail headed toward Brainard Lake. I hiked and patrolled in the winter with John because he was a superb partner. Strong, smart, totally dependable, and always up for just about any route.

John knew I was a dawdler, he was fine with starting the hike together and maybe making it all the way to lunch without me falling behind. But then along the trail I just watched as he got farther and farther ahead and finally disappeared from view. I knew I would find him close to the lake, most likely sacked out, waiting for me.

With John gone, there was the immediate solitude of the High Country forest. Without thinking of my partner or the pace or destination, I was free to just slowly let my surroundings soak into my consciousness.

There was Kinnikinnick, an evergreen ground cover with red berries that turns a reddish-orange in the fall. I could see the sap on the pines and up close could also smell it. The stream to my left showed flares of reflected sun through breaks in the trees. And the path under my boots was soft with pine needle padding between rocks that had been smoothed by millions of years of weather.

I caught myself thinking that I was unencumbered by anything as I strolled the soft path winding through the trees. And if there were limits, they were the limits to my imagination and physical abilities— oh, and maybe gravity. I searched for words to describe what I was feeling but the words were lacking, as they often are. But one word stayed with me. Solitude is Freedom.

* * *

As I write this I think of the times in my life where I have just happened to find solitude by circumstance and luck. There have also been a number of times in my life where solitude did not just happen; I went looking for it.

Blue Eyes and I had been living together for less than a year in south Boulder. From our condo on Bradley Drive, I used to run up to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) that is built on a bluff just below the mountains. We were both working as textbook representatives for different publishing houses. I was ambitious, but had just gotten a call that someone else had been hired for a new job I’d applied for instead of me.

I told Blue Eyes I was going for a walk. I grabbed my day pack, a box of business cards, a bottle of cognac, and started walking uphill. When I got to NCAR it was dusk. I followed the trail to the water tower and then veered off into the understory.

I sat there for a while leaning up against a rock sipping cognac. It was warm, there was no wind, and no one else around. The only sounds were from some birds settling in for the night and probably discussing their day. I stopped thinking about how pissed off I was and, started thinking about the quiet and peacefulness surrounding me. That the rock and stretch of dirt were a pleasant place to be away from everything and everybody on the beginning of a starry night in Boulder. In the solitude it became clear that I didn’t want to sell textbooks anymore. Not out of frustration or anger, but out of the realization that I wanted to find out “what’s next” even though I had no clear idea of what next would be.

I dumped out the business cards, poured some cognac on them, and set the cards and box on fire. Once the fire was out and the ashes covered with dirt, I picked up my pack and bottle and started walking downhill to home. Solitude helps with Decisions.

Blue Eyes had come looking for me,

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“Where have you been?”

“Up the hill.”

“Why do you smell like smoke?”

“Burned my business cards.”

“Good idea,” she said, and we laughed at the foolishness of it all. She drove me home.

Sometime later I wondered if seeking solitude was just another form of self-absorption. But it seemed to me that solitude is much more about searching for answers than it is about self-absorption. That does not mean that there is not a cost to solitude. And that cost is the uncertainty your solitude causes in those closest to you.

Solitude has nothing to do with loneliness.

Solitude is a choice.

Solitude is clarity.

Solitude is freedom.

Solitude has a cost.

###

An old friend and paid subscriber asked me why I wrote a weekly essay on Substack when she said, “Is it about the subscription money or the recognition?”

I had to chuckle because writing for Substack is not about either one. In spite of the blatant bragging on Substack about huge incomes and thousands of subscribers, usually by people selling self-help, or writing seminars, or snake oil, most folks on Substack do not make much money. And recognition is not going to happen when the competition is from brand name writers (think Paul Krugman, Dave Berry, and Garrison Keillor to name a few) and hundreds of thousands of other fine writers on Substack.

Substack for me is about legacy. My only way to give something back, for this life I have been given, is to write first, to entertain and second, to have you think about what I have written and maybe look at something differently. And admittedly I wanted a place where my writing is easily accessible and will be available somewhere for the foreseeable future even after Substack morphs into something way different or entirely disappears.

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