The stay at home order has been lifted, bars and restaurants opening up, retail and soon the farmer’s market, though all with restrictions. Life is slowly getting back to some form of “normal”. But I am not eager to get back into the flow of things, to end this quiet time of introspection and solitude. The first few weeks I could not focus on anything, kept scrolling social media, and the newsfeed. But I could not bear the way everything is flung out–anger and outrage and that terrible need to find someone to blame for what is happening. At first I felt the need to “stay informed” but then I realized it didn’t really matter if I knew what so-and-so said, how someone reacted–what I really needed was some perspective.

Finally, I learned to put down the phone, turn off the computer and stand still and listen. Taking me out of the human community encouraged me to connect to the natural community. I had the time and space to really feel spring awakening the woods, to go barefoot in the greening grass, to make a daily trip to the pond instead of to town, to listen to the gossip of the ducks and geese, the raucous chatter of the redwing blackbirds and flickers, to watch the drama of the osprey’s return and discovery of a goose in their nest. I looked forward to the daily visit of Woody the Woodpecker and his silly laugh. And was awed when a sharp shined hawk took down a dove just outside my kitchen window.

This has also been a time for reading–my favorite kind of reading–quiet, introspective books that encourage deep thought. Because that is what seems to be lacking in this crisis. Deep thought rather than instantaneous reaction. Reading writers like Wendell Berry. Scott Russell Sanders and Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, gave me chance to put all of this into a social context. I could see someone’s deep, considered thought processes, analyzing a problem and understanding all the intricacies and issues that are involved, then filtering all of it through direct experience and feeling.

Of late I have returned to Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Written more than 50 years ago, it has much to say about this time of isolation. It’s the story of her weeks alone at the beach and how the solitude and time out of time gave her the opportunity to reflect on all the different seasons and responsibilities of a woman’ life. Though times have changed, her deep insights and perspectives still have resonance. And near the end she echoes my fears for how I will respond as this stay-at-home order expires:

“When I go back will I be submerged again, not only by centrifugal activities, but by too many centripetal ones? Not only by distraction, but by too many opportunities? Not only by dull people but by too many interesting ones? The multiplicity of the world will crowd in on me again with its false sense of values. Values weighed in quantity, not quality, in speed, not stillness, in noise, not silence, in words, not in thoughts, in acquisitiveness, not beauty. How shall I resist the onslaught?”

How indeed.