The Quiet Necessity of Nature
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
--William Butler Yeats
“I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree,” John Yeats wrote in 1888, while immersed in busy London. He was walking down the street, heard the trickle of water from a fountain for sale in a shop window, and suddenly remembered an uninhabited island near his childhood home in Ireland. He wrote of a yearning to leave the bustling city and “live alone in the bee-loud glade,” “where peace comes dropping slow.”
I’ve been hearing Yeats poem in my heart for the past week, since I have just returned from spending time in our family cabin, deep in the green forests of western Washington.
Only, in my heart I hear, “I will arise and go now, and go to Bracken Lane.”
Life at the cabin is slow. We wake to the light filtering through tall fir trees thick around us. There is no hurry to arise. We sleep a little longer. When we finally arise, we putter around fixing a little breakfast from whatever is in the fridge. Maybe eggs. Maybe banana bread the neighbor gave us the other day.
We open the door and smell the Christmassy piney freshness, the clean purity of the air. We listen to the silence.
Maybe then we walk down the overgrown path to the little creek. We sit on the old wooden bench my father-in-law built decades ago. We watch the water burble and gurgle over the black lava rock warn smooth by thousands of years of trickling in the summer and surging in the winter. There salamanders live in shallow rock pools and dragon flies dart along the water’s surface. We hear in memory our little children laughing there years ago, wading and playing.
Maybe we walk the other direction to overlook the big creek where the river rushes over the black rocks, where the neighbors have dammed up a little swimming hole, where the fish swim.
Then we might go for a drive along deserted roads that barely make a dent in the vast green forest. We might go to town, or to a mountain, or to the immense blue Columbia River, where windsurfers skip gaily over the white caps.
In the evening we have a bite to eat. Wash the two plates and two cups in the sink, admiring Grandma Lydia’s mismatched but cheerful Corelle dishes.
After, in the evening light, we take a walk down the lane, past the neighbor’s pristine garden, fenced against the deer. Past the hygienic pen where three pigs live their best life under the trees--until autumn when they get to become pork chops and hams.
We continue down the empty road a piece—the road where it is kind of an event if a car passes by--to the bridge over Trout Creek. There we lean over the rails and admire the silver light sparkling on the water as it cascades through the great, thick forest. There are houses along the river, we think because of the mailboxes, but they are not visible in the tall trees, the thick vine maples, and the bracken.
Sometimes we meet a neighbor on the lane. We exchange pleasantries. We know the neighbors watch over our place when we aren’t there. But mostly folks who choose to live in the woods are private people. We don’t go knocking on their doors.
After our walk, we pull out the Rumikub game, the same set with the same tiles we used to play with Grandpa Carl all those years ago. Paul and I play two games—I win one, he wins one. We are well matched.
Then bed, lulled to sleep by the sweet sound of the river running outside our window and the breeze blowing sweetly through the fir trees.
Yeats says of his Innisfree,
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey.
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
For me, when I am in the city, living in a pavement world, I smell the scent of fir trees, I hear the river flowing.
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
There is a need for the quiet of nature. Where are your retreats from the world? What peaceful place do you remember when life gets hectic? What is your Innisfree?
