What Happens in the Quiet? By Al Sikes

The Economist headline: “Everybody is Going to the Moon.”  I read the article the morning after watching a movie about Joan Didion. My wife, Marty, had read one of her books and was intrigued by her life.

The Didion film was more interesting than yet another article about celestial activities. Didion, one of the best writers of her generation, spent a lifetime trying to understand life. And then she was faced with the inevitable, death. First of her husband, quickly followed by her daughter. And what she more fully absorbed is you cannot understand one without the other.

The Economist article detailed the various explorations—if that is even the right word today. South Korea launches this summer. The United Arab Emirates in the fall. And there are a number of follow-up launches pursuing what we might call habitation. This fascination with outer space caused me to reflect on the earth.

When my grandparents were young, the American West was still the New Frontier. My parent’s generation fought Hitler’s earthly ambitions to change boundaries and now human ambition is often other-worldly. But, of course, there is the endless saga—how to live together.

Recently, but not often enough, I was paddling with the Dolphins and Manatees. It was quiet; a respite. My eyes were drawn to the visuals; the Dolphins playfully following my kayak while the Manatees seemed to be rolling their way to, well whatever destinations—I presume to find food. Manatees seem to defy Darwin’s law with some help from conservation rules.

The Manatees reminded me of a fishing trip several decades ago. The boat’s captain voiced his frustration as we motored, quite slowly, to where he wanted to fish. We were motoring through a Manatee zone and the law required “idle speed”—slow and relatively quiet.

My paddling was not a threat to either the Manatees or Florida’s speed limit. But, my time with the aquatic wonders allowed me to reflect. It was quiet—an invitation to slow down and at least an opportunity to go beyond time’s insistences.

In 1959, as a teenager, I spent the summer working in Alaska. My trip began a few months after Alaska became the 49th State—America’s newest last frontier.

I worked alongside men who spent their weekends homesteading. Alaska offered land to those who were prepared to develop it. My fellow workers had a cabin with acreage on their minds. Their weekends were spent building a foundation to secure their claim or hunting for winter’s food.

There have been times when I wondered why I didn’t join them. But, while I have returned to Alaska often, 1959 is missing. It now takes a sea plane to find quiet; Alaska’s most spectacular seems as visited as Yellowstone.

In 1959 my backpacking and fishing began at a trailhead along the Kenai River. The trailhead is now a big parking lot. Ambition and capitalism are irrepressible forces. Quiet is hard to find—there are few Manatee zones in life.

I left for Alaska from Sikeston, Missouri, where I lived in the immediate watershed of the Mississippi River—Delta country they called it. It was flat, had once been a giant swamp and the natural habitat for fishing was oxbow ponds or lakes—offspring of the great river.

The trip left a deep impression on me and undoubtedly helped shape my life. The visuals framed the drama. Mountains, glaciers, rapid streams, and waterfalls graced the landscape. Not only was Kansas new to me but so was Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. Added to the American West were Alberta, British Columbia and, before arriving in Alaska, the Yukon Territory.

At the time 1,300 miles of the trip were on gravel road. The stretch was part of the Alcan Highway beginning in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. I experienced grandeur at 40 not 80 miles an hour—“slow down” the mountain road insisted.

In recent years my appreciation for that 1959 trip has soared. Recent trips to the Mountain West have featured traffic congestion, heat and atmospheric smoke. Last year in Montana guided drift boats crowded the put-in ramps at 7:00 AM under Hoot Owl restrictions. To protect trout in warming water, fishing was concentrated during the cooler part of the day.

If promotion yields fact, then much of our travel takes us back to the crowded old country, while a lot of the world comes to visit Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. Only Antarctica seems, for most, insurmountable.

There are, of course, many challenges that accompany our fascinations. For the most part we do a decent job with them. We call our tools infrastructure and just appropriated $1.2 T to upgrade it. Yet the pace of ambition and capital and technology has left many breathless. This has spawned an industry to inform the breathless how to live their lives.

It is hard to know where all of this ends. TS Eliot in Four Quartets noted riders on the London Underground (subway)seemed “distracted from distraction by distraction.” Life today is overwhelmed by distractions. And even when we find quiet we are faced with the enduring question: What do I do with it? I suspect Joan Didion asked that question more than once.

For me, nature provides a partial answer but more importantly a crucial prompt. The grandeur is proof of more than we can comprehend. The 1959 trip and a more recent one to Antarctica were conclusive. Nature right-sizes me—vanishingly small. It insists I reflect. It poses the most important questions.

And, as I find nature my muse I cannot help but mourn for it. I keep asking: why should humans so often dismiss nature—the immortal gifts? Why should nature’s prophesies be dismissed by human’s ambitions? Wasn’t nature designed and engineered correctly?

In our quiet times truth is available. A truth that will reconnect our lives with our souls. And maybe, just maybe, find that soulful missions are more important than another trip to the moon.