Solitude

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

There is a place on the road to Big Sur, California. High up on the hill and above the marine layer that rolls in from the Pacific Ocean. A place that summoned my soul since I moved to San Diego in 1992. It was hard to explain to family, try as I might. Like salmon are driven to swim upstream, I felt a calling to drive up the hill above Big Sur to find myself.

“Schuyler, one of these days, I must go to Big Sur.” — me throughout the 1990s

Big Sur proper is a small coastal town on the Pacific Coast Highway. Rustic and quaint and rural, wooded and peaceful, this outpost of civilization was never my felt destination. If I reached Big Sur, I had gone too far. It was the road to Big Sur that pulled me in.

Above the hill on the road to Big Sur lies a monastery. The New Camaldoli Hermitage to be exact. “The hermitage was founded in 1958 by two monks from the motherhouse in Camaldoli in Tuscany, who had spent two years searching for a site that combined solitude and natural beauty.” A place of solitude high above the splendor of crashing ocean waves and creative rock formations on a jagged coast line. I wanted to experience complete, and absolute solitude, for a week. Just me and my thoughts and a good book and writing pad.

It was the solitude of a hermitage on the road to Big Sur. I wanted to forget the larger world for a spell.

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My Mom always said good things happen to those who wait. After years of dreaming about this hermitage high above the hill on the road to Big Sur, my wife relented. She had zero interest in a week’s stay at a hermitage (what would one do?) but, if I felt the calling, then I should go. To my surprise, my daughter agreed to join me for a week at the hermitage.

The date was July 28, 2019, before the days of Covid.

As I turned right towards the hill, my excitement level began to rise. Over twenty-five years of a dream deferred and now I was within two miles of this place I felt drawn to. The higher we drove, the greater the sensation we were above the clouds over the horizon. It is remarkable to peer into cloud tops from above. It was glorious.

It was sooo quiet. One commits to slience when at the hermitage. One can talk in gentle, quiet tones at the bookshop but that is it. The idea is to create a quiet place throughout the hermitage where one’s inner thoughts can come to the fore.

My daughter and I were assigned separate rooms for the week. Plain, non-descript rooms with a bed, two chairs, a desk and a view. Always a view of nature’s majesty.

The rolling green hillside remineded me of the backcountry in Julian. Just whispers of how the West must have greeted pioneer settlers in the late 1800s.

There was a cross above my daughter’s bed. City girl that she was, she imagined all manner of wild life prowling about in the darkness of night. The stars. The night sky was full of stars, and the silence of cosmic creation.

When the marine level lifted, the views of the blue ocean extended forever.

Signs on the grounds reminded us of the cardinal rule — silence. There were books to read. There was absolute silence in the modest cafeteria. Other than my daughter and two people at the bookstore, I did not talk with anyone for a week. I could put the whole world behind me and forget it.

What was it like to be silent beside my daughter for a week? We would take morning walks together in silence along the long driveway. At first, there was the temptation to speak but the epic silence for miles around felt sacred and precious. We would meet other guests who would nod and gesture and we would do the same. While I took in the valley views, my daughter took photographs of wildlife and landscapes outside my cabin. She read with the marine layer at her feet. We learned how to communicate without words which brought us closer together. I remember navigating the kitchen with no spoken words at all. The real mystery to us were not other guests but the monks. Where were the ten to fifteen monks who were running this monastery? We never saw a monk. We saw rabbits, all manner of birds and maybe a bobcat but not a single monk.

On the other hand, what might my daughter and I have said to a monk in a place of solitude? Not much, I suspect.

I was not lonely for the week. The thoughts of writers kept me company. My own thoughts pulled up a chair too. I thought about my love for all my children, how touched I was that my daughter was willing to experience a monastery with her Dad (surely an essay topic for a college application/smile), how the views rendered the major things minor, how small I felt at night underneath millions of stars.

I didn’t need a fancy Tesla, a villa in Tuscany, or a Mexican beachfront place to feel peace at the center. A bed, a desk, a book, a writing pad and views nourished my soul just fine. Could it be I was drawn to the hermitage all of these years for this self-knowledge? Like salmon are drawn to their home freshwaters after years at sea?

Conclusion: Up on a hill on the road to Big Sur, I found solitude. I existed for a week in a world of beauty without spoken words. I took in the earth’s beauty. If home is one’s inner life, I understood why the hermitage called to me all of these years. I lived in a writer’s paradise for a week. All around me was the serenity of original thought.

The monks found depth through stillness.