When I first became a hermit,
July 1994, I moved to the desert without electricity – except the tiny bit supplied by a 50 W solar panel. (Yes 50, not 500, not 5,000.) Many winter evenings I went to bed 12-13 hours before the sun would rise, because I had run out of candles and batteries and was not doing well with my kerosene lamp. That’s when I learned to just listen to my own quiet thoughts for hours at a time, and enjoy them!

It was a very rewarding experience. I loved that I had no radio news, no music to distract me from my immediate life, no blender, no noisy items in my kitchen other than my knife clacking on the chopping board. Really loved it.

I noticed tiny things like a spiderweb catching light that slid back-and-forth along it in the breeze, the phoebe parents teaching their young ones to fly, the hawks and ravens sometimes soaring together, the clouds, the sounds of lizards skittering.…

I reflected on that in recent years with great disappointment in myself today, seeming to need very much the distraction of Facebook and YouTube in nearly every moment of my life, preparing breakfast, washing dishes, taking a shower, dressing ….

This morning, something seems to have switched. Yes, I’m on Facebook again, but I did spend some hours enjoying the silence. Just wanted to share the simple joy of some blessed silence.