MIND MOVES: A chance to slow down and check my co-ordinates
ONCE AGAIN, I returned in the past month to the wilds of Southern Kentucky, to an old log cabin deep in the woods. Much like I had done in May this year, I came to rest, walk through endless woods and slow down enough to check my co-ordinates and see how I was doing.
Over the past few years, thanks to the kindness of friends, this place has been an important mental health pit stop for me.
This time around, however, from the moment I set foot in the place, there was a different feel to it. The trees that had covered the mountain with a fresh green canopy in May were bare. A solitary remaining leaf that clung valiantly to a sapless branch gave up the ghost and surrendered to its destiny. The entire animal kingdom, which had painted a 24-hour soundscape in May, was nowhere to be seen or heard.
The lights were on, but there was nobody home. This stark, deserted landscape was radically different from what I had remembered and anticipated. It felt quite desolate; there was a chill factor, real and metaphorical, that took some getting used to.
My mood took its cue from my surroundings. The isolation that had provided a welcome relief earlier in the year hit me this time in a different way. As I scrunched my way across leaf-covered trails, it got under my skin and seeped into my bones.
Although I hated to admit it, there was a nagging feeling of loneliness that I just couldn't shake off. I wasn't quite the hero of the wilderness that I had thought I was. I needed a different way into this experience. I needed some company. And since every animal in the vicinity had bailed out on me, it would have to be the human kind.
Luckily for me, a few miles up the road, just past Abe Lincoln's birthplace, there was a Cistercian monastery, the Abbey of Gethsemani. This was home to the late Thomas Merton, someone who has inspired my adventures in solitude. I figured he owed me sanctuary. I booked myself in for two nights and stayed five. Call it a voluntary admission, if you like.
The monastery provided a safe setting, good food and beautiful woodland walks that eased me back into my own being. Contemplative life provides a way to get in touch with your centre and with the source of your vitality.
Silence is the language spoken in such places and in that silence you become able to hear your own voice again.
Merton lived his final years in a hermitage built for him in the 2,700-acre forest that surrounds the monastery. Although normally out of bounds - it is still used by the monks for their own personal retreats - Brother Luke, the Cantor, kindly offered to take me there. I sat at the same desk where Merton had written books that had fired my imagination in my youth.
Merton's view was that solitude was not simply something for hermits; it was crucial to the health of individuals and of society.
"Society to merit its name must be made up not of numbers, of mechanical units, but of persons. To be a person implies responsibility and freedom, and both these imply a certain interior solitude, a sense of personal integrity, a sense of one's own reality and of one's ability to give to society . . . or to refuse to give," he wrote.
I found the monastery both restful and revitalising. We need places like Gethsemani in the world. I left there late on the final day of my stay, confident that I could settle better into my own "hermitage" and relate to its surroundings on easier terms.
Driving home along a dark country road, I collided with a deer. It came literally out of nowhere and in spite of braking and swerving I clipped it with the front end of my jeep. I survived the shock, the jeep can be repaired, but the deer's life ended abruptly and painfully.
Life can be funny sometimes. Just when you think you've got all the pieces in place, it whacks you with a sickening blow that makes no sense at all.
I was stunned for about 24 hours but I got over it. My return to health was marked by a diminishing concern for yet another little Bambi whose mom wouldn't be coming home and an increasing anxiety regarding the cost of fixing the jeep.
It was time to head back into my own woods and make my peace with them. Being rested and more aware that life refuses to conform to our limited expectations, I was able to accept these woods on their terms rather than mine.
This time around I noticed how the crisp sunlight created pools and light amid the shadows along the trails where I walked. I caught sight of a flock of wild turkey as they high-tailed it through the trees; I felt the swish of a buzzard's wings as it passed me by, almost within reach, and I heard the cry of wild geese high in the blue skies overhead, heading back home.
• Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health (www.headstrong.ie)
