Sound, Fear, and the Power to Move

LIVING alone in the woods is an adventure in silence. People say, ‘Are n’t you, a woman, afraid to stay alone there?’ Yes, it becomes at times an adventure in fear. It is also an adventure in motion.

When I first started my search for reality in a one-room cabin alone, it was difficult to shake the feeling that I was expected somewhere. It did not seem right that time should stretch ahead like an untracked, snowy plain without compulsory paths and commanding signposts. From that has evolved the conviction that it is useless to hurry to save time with no reason for saving it, useless to follow a charted way unless it leads somewhere.

Life is a journey from birth to death along the edge of silence. Yet it is of noise that we make technical studies. If mankind were to make a study of silence, sincerely and long enough, discordant noise would disappear like dew before sun.

Through force of circumstance, I have made an unconscious study of accordant sound. I have learned that snow, when it falls, makes a pattering sound as of wee padded feet hurrying. I have heard the brook by my door bubbling all day, not conscious I was hearing it. I have awakened on winter mornings with a puzzled realization that some change has come over my background of silence. The brook has frozen, locked, in the night.

There are windless, moonlight nights when there seems to be absolutely no outdoor sound. Soft snow has packed itself about all makers of sound. As the night becomes deeper and colder, the boards of my cabin snap as they contract. At about three or four in the morning the ice in my water bucket cracks as it freezes tighter.

For evening companions I have three sounds — the flutter of flame in my stove, the tick of my clock, the hurried tumbling sound of the brook outside. These are three pictures pinned against a wall of silence. One comes to understand why people too much alone occasionally become demented. They walk up so close to silence, almost within touching, experiencing distance of it. Then they become afraid — afraid that the flutter of the flame, the tick of the clock, the sound of their own breath soughing through their nostrils, will stop. What then?

Is identity found only in sound and movement? In the chaff of noise from mechanical motion, the distracting rush of people and things? Is it to increase his consciousness of individuality and importance that man draws these closer to him, claps and claps, ever urging, ‘Play on! Play on! Let’s go! Let’s go!’ Is mankind running away from the brink of silence because he is afraid of the realization which he carries always with him, that he came out of silence, that he will go back again into silence, and alone?

There is no complete silence to be experienced by a normal person in a natural setting. Muffle the world with snow, stand in the middle of a plain on a windless night: the earth is full of sound, the air is full of sound. It is a thin veil of sound with silence behind it, awesomely near; but it is not silence itself. Between a man and the realization of silence there is always the beating of his own heart.

Living alone in the woods, as near silence as human is permitted to approach, I have wondered about fear. My friends, knowing, if they would but stop to think, that no human being is going to come through the snow to my cabin at night, say, ‘But are n’t you afraid to stay there alone?’ I was afraid at first, for the same unreasoned reasons which make them afraid for me. But I have discovered how useless fear is. There are two fears — fear of life, and fear of death. Approach near enough to silence, and fear of death disappears. The principal fear of life is fear of physical harm. Approach close enough to the earth, and fear of physical harm disappears.

I blew out my candles late one snowy night and went to bed. The only remaining light was from the flicker of fire showing through the draft of my stove. The flutter of the flame was like a muffled rushing. Slowly, gradually, it died. I dropped off to sleep on a pillow of near-silence. I was awakened suddenly by an unusual sound. A shelf of books near my bed had fallen. My mind registered immediately the truth of what had happened, but my body was afraid. No muscle was at normal tension. I was subtly convulsed by a shock which had bred fear.

I said to myself: ‘You are now afraid. This is fear.’ Every muscle of my torso seemed to be twisted toward a central point near the solar plexus. The calves of my legs, the long muscles down the front of my thighs, were as though charged with a current of electricity. But while my body was momentarily paralyzed, my mind reasoned quickly. Before the physical reaction faded, the humor of the situation dawned upon me. A voice inside said, ‘Run, you fool, if you want to. I’m staying here.’ Of such is fear.

Living alone in the woods affords a study of movement. Going to the spring for water, alone at sunset time, can become a ritual full of physical pleasure and mental peace. Kneeling by the spring, one bends forward and up, forward and up, over and over again till, dipperful by dipperful, the bucket is brimming. This becomes a salute to the dying day.

As the weight of the pail tugs at one’s muscles, the mind unconsciously gives thanks for the power to lift and to move. One becomes conscious of his own body in the swinging of an axe — the power in coördination, the frustration in its lack. In the woods a person’s strength is measured by his naturalness. There is a gesture of benediction in the swing of the arm that draws together the curtains at night after the last light has faded and it is candle time.

Living alone in the woods, I have found these three realities — the subtle sounds that veil silence, the uselessness of fear, the power to move.

CARRIE WOOD PORTER