I know why people retire in Eugene now. It isn’t some dull pastoral place where those who’ve lived high octane lives come to die.
The land is magic.
To be here and listen is to discover an entirely different, vibrant world full of perspective-altering beauty. The drama of two hawks on opposite ponderosas. What are they saying? The many sounds, cries, jubilation of the birds. Their colors, sizes, spans.
Local folklore speaks of fairies, living in the trees. It is easy to imagine them orchestrating some grand plot around me, where hills slope and turn to their whims.
Maybe they know why the hawks are squawking; have summoned the sprouting of huckleberry and magnolia where you won’t ever see it—unless you look. Unless you listen. Unless you understand the majesty of your own silence in this place, the practice of which yields untold treasures of observation.
People don’t come here to retreat from the world. They come here finally ready to practice the silence it takes to soak in the real world, with non-human beings and holy manifestations that humble you kindly and gently when you find you know nothing about them.
I am so grateful to have found this silence at my age.
Why must we work our whole lives in a construct designed to remove us from the very places that make us human? Those places that, naturally, include but do not depend upon our presence? Why must we slave for decades in a box, to earn our freedom pass to places like this, maybe, finally, one day?
When we decided to move here, I decided I’d never live that way again. Many in my generation are doing the same. I refuse to wait to really live until I’m done working.
And as time goes on, the silence I have time to afford will grow—and so will my attention to it.
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