The Fate of Quiet: A Weekend in VT

This weekend we went to Wallingford, Vermont, a small town south of Rutland, the latter being where Nick grew up.

The house we stayed at in Wallingford abutted many acres of farmland and occasionally we would hear the rumbling moo of the brown and white bull who stood, swaying his tail, outside our window.

“His job is chief sire,” our host Fred said.

The spot was overwhelmingly quiet. There was not much to do but nap, watch the birds alight on the birdhouse and walk along the calm river that wended its way along the road we stayed at. This all suited me just fine, being seven and a half months pregnant, and feeling it.

When we weren’t watching the birds or making a dent in our grinders from Gill’s, we were walking. We walked the road along the river, we walked the White Rocks Recreation Trail. I pointed out the waterfalls and Nick mistook them for a leaky faucet; they were so small in his opinion.

Whaler kept locking his jaws on my walking stick, running away with it and then dropping it ten feet away.

It’s funny that you have to drive three hours sometimes for quiet. Work has become so noisy, or I’ve allowed it to become so noisy, it occurred to me that the weekend in Wallingford held the first moments of true quiet I’ve had in months.

As we stood at the vista by White Rocks, the valley below was still and quiet, the only sound that of the wind shushing through the treetops. Then, on a walk by the river, a chair that someone had left with a line slingshot, watching the eddies and looking for fish—there was quiet too.

I like quiet. I sit in my car and I turn the radio off, I sit at home and mostly keep the music off too, though I love music. When the baby comes, there will be lots of external noise I can’t switch off, or opt not to turn on. There will be many wails and cried, I’m told, anthems of a new life and new way of life, songs and howls of a new adventure. I’m aware that this chuff has the potential to rankle me at times.

In the book I’m reading, the author discusses one of my favorite philosophies by Viktor Frankl—the idea that in between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our ability to choose our response. In that choice lies our freedom and our growth.

When life is easy, it’s easy to to find that space—to widen the gap between stimulus and response so as to choose carefully, choose wisely. I’m aware that this will be just as critical when baby arrives, from everything to how to respond when he or she is crying in the wee hours of the morning, to what to say in a fraught moment when Sleep has been out of reach for days. And so the fate of quiet in the external sense—well, that’s looking like something I might have said goodbye to for a bit. But the fate of quiet inside, the ability to choose and create that space and valley of peace, that has infinite potential to grow.