Just before midnight on a recent night, I stood at the end of the driveway and stared up into a mesmerizing sky for perhaps 10 minutes. The air was clear and brisk. A bitter wind howled down the quiet street, whipping past slumbering houses and rattling the branches of a nearby maple tree.
For a little while, even though I was surrounded by civilization, I felt alone in wild nature — a witness to something far bigger than myself.
Lost amid the vast sky of stars, I let my mind wander, imagining that I was an adventurer blazing a trail through the Alaskan wilderness, or a homesteader surviving on the Great Plains of Wyoming. Nothing mattered except for the present — the cold wind; the shaking tree; the twinkling stars.
Sometimes, it feels like I’ve spent more time at home this past year than the past decade combined. At first, there was a sweetness to the slowdown. Downshifting felt appropriate and good. And it was intriguing in an artistic sense — I enjoyed watching the seasons turn on the same plot of land.
But the view outside my home-office window has turned stale. My routine is the same, day in and day out.
And strangely, with more time by myself than usual, I find sitting alone with my thoughts to be more of a challenge than ever. Distraction has become an annoying acquaintance that I can’t seem to escape.
Instead of silence, I find myself seeking out music, movies, podcasts, newscasts, television shows and books on tape — anything other than nothing. Perhaps it’s an unconscious attempt to dull the societal loneliness that this pandemic has brought with it; maybe it’s my brain’s way of saying that it needs a vacation — an escape from reality.
During this time of social distancing, I long for solitude — desperately, sometimes, like a caged animal that needs freedom.
On a number of different occasions during my younger years, I ventured out to see the world by myself and without a plan. On my first solo trip, for example, I backpacked through Europe, from Austria to Amsterdam, the United Kingdom to Italy — 12 countries in less than a month. With the wind at my back, I stood on a chimney, arms outstretched, overlooking the city of Vienna; temporarily out of money, I convinced a conductor to let me sleep on the hallway floor of a sleeper train bound for Rome and awoke outside the Colosseum.
It was a frenzied cultural experience of shock and adventure that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
On my second solo trip, I boarded a Greyhound bus just before Christmas and, for a week, rode and hitchhiked cross country to Nevada and back, stopping at national parks.
The long hours I spent staring out the window, watching as the terrain changed from mountainous to woodland to grassland and back again, encouraged introspection. Alone in that in-between space, neither here nor there, I found intellectual and creative freedom — I could be anyone I wanted to be.
The bus became a time capsule of sorts. I, an unseen witness of everyday experiences, passed through the familiar spaces of others. Through the window, I observed life as it turned and spun. Every mile brought with it a fresh start and an opportunity to see the world in a different way.
It was a rejuvenating experience from which I grew immensely.
These days, I find myself locked in a different kind of time capsule: my apartment, which is firmly rooted to the ground. I am not moving through space; instead, I have become the stationary one. Everything else seems to be moving around me, passing me by, and faster every day.
And as time slows, it’s hard to tell whether or not I’ve grown because introspection has become so elusive.
For nearly a year, I’ve been ignoring the travel itch — that steady pang in the heart that prompts the fingers to punch the keys and purchase tickets to a new destination. My roots feel like they’ve grown so deep that I might never be able to leave this apartment even when the stay-at-home orders have lifted. The light at the end of the tunnel has become a pinprick.
Yet, it’s during those brief moments, when the wind is howling and the clear night is cold, that I’m reminded of the adventure and blessed solitude that awaits in the wilderness — perhaps far away, perhaps just a short walk from the back door.
Andy Castillo is the features editor at the Greenfield Recorder. He can be reached at acastillo@recorder.com.