These days there is a lot of noise, especially with our current president. The negative tone and demeaning discourse are wearing. As a result I have tuned in less, a significant step back for a news junkie like me. It was easier to do this as Reed and I made our way across the US from west to east, after picking up our dog Conner who was staying with my sister in San Diego, and then settling into our new home here in Rhode Island. Here are some snippets about silence from our travels. Quiet along the Pacific Crest Trail in southern Oregon is easy to find beneath the cathedral of red pine, redwood, fir and cedar, where a carpet of needles and leaves silences our footfalls. A fluorescent green lace drapes the tree branches. It is so bright it subpoenas my eyes and commands attention in the off and on again drizzle. Not a bad day for walking, especially under the canopy of trees. In the south I’ve called this Spanish moss, but after a little research later I learn it’s not moss, it’s lichen and like in the southern US, the older growth is sage green. Spring is here. Large patches of snow melt give way to soil and brown grass covered with spider-like webs. I learn it is snow mold. But when I look harder, I see tiny purple flowers, about the size of half my little finger’s nail. Winter’s cold is finally yielding to spring, the dependable cycle of life is reassuring.

I’ve been craving a kayak paddle. Our attempts off the coast near Hiroshima, Japan were cancelled due to wind. Renting didn’t work out along the coast of California, but we succeeded near Port Angeles, Washington. Dungeness Bay, the home of Dungeness crab, has a National Wildlife Area where a nearly seven-mile arm of beach, Dungeness Spit, juts out from the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The sandy arm is piled with drift logs and wood, ocean smoothed boulders and stones, and kelp. Earlier we walked the beach and watched a young eagle watch us from atop a tall snag. The susurrus of the surf and the caw of the seagulls soothed us. The tide heads out and there is little wind as we climb into our banana-yellow kayaks with flat bottoms and paddle out into the shallow bay. The current flows counter-clockwise, so we head to our right toward the distant lighthouse as a cargo ship, much further out, laden with containers heads into port, either Tacoma or Seattle. Only the lap of surf against the plastic boat and again the wail and squawks of the seagulls fills our ears. Our first destination is a small, sandy island populated by harbor seals. As we approach they slip into the water and peer at us. Smooth heads like that of an egg-bald man and dark eyes are visible just above the water. They bob up and down, silently swimming wide circles around our kayaks. I find the rhythm of paddling: right paddle in water, pull and push against right foot calling my back muscles into action, then the same with the left side. Pull and push, pull and push. The routine frees my mind. After rushing through a myriad of thoughts, sometimes called monkey mind, my mind finds stillness. Reed and I don’t talk as we watch the gray sky, the distant snow-capped Olympic Mountains, the beach of the spit where we’d walked earlier. Seagulls dip into the sea, float, shriek and take off.  Loons glide then dive and disappear, reappearing several yards away.

It is an experience of being in the present, the forever present. A state Conner the dog occupies constantly. It is a healing space. The to-do list and worries forgotten. I was here in the now, nowhere, now here.

During the last week of April we arrived in Rhode Island, and stood in front of our virtually leased house located just a block from East Greenwich Bay. The realtor had uploaded a walk through video and pictures and told us we were silly not to rent this cute place. However, the photos didn’t capture the peeling paint, the overflowing trash dumpsters, or the poorly lit basement with mouse nests. Now I’ve lived in old houses, owned a farm, so rodents don’t bother me. But our soon-to-be landlord was put out when we mentioned our concerns to him. To make a long story short, we stepped away from the deal and took our laden cars and dog to a pet-friendly extended stay hotel. The moving truck was on its way from Ohio and we would be paying several hundred more in storage fees if we didn’t land something fast. We looked at lofts and apartments in the rehabbed industrial mills. The textile mills, including Fruit of the Loom, and had been based here until the industry was outsourced to Asia. One had a black mold problem and a hundred tenants had filed a lawsuit against the developer. Another was ideal, along the river with a walkout porch, but the manager was tied up with a family emergency, so he couldn’t promise us a contract.

Worried about the timing of the moving truck, I happened upon a small house on the beach of Narraganset Bay in Warwick. Locals had encouraged us to find something outside Warwick, a mostly blue-collar community, but we drove by anyway and the landlord happened to be cutting the grass. The 900 square foot, two bedroom and one bathroom with a damp basement was smaller than we had anticipated, but when we saw the view we had to reconsider. No other house sat between us and the beach. We could see the Conimicut Lighthouse across the water. Needless to say, we decided to make the tiny house work, doing further shedding of our belongings. We have enjoyed walking the sandy, shell-laden, pebble strewn beach. Found horseshoe crabs doing their coupling, paddled borrowed kayaks along the shore, taught Conner not to eat crabs and watched him learn not to drink salt water. It has been a perfect space to seek silence, to come home from work, to rediscover our creative muses.

Stay tuned.