This post was written by Starly Pratt, a Humanities Center student fellow.
I sat on the edge of the cliff at Tintagel Castle as the wind pushed salty air into my lungs. To the right of me stretched miles of the Cornwall coast in all its cloudy glory, the soiled smell of the ten-minute-past rain still in my nose. A seagull danced around behind me, unsure if I would swat it away or offer it food. Too bad I already ate my only peanut butter granola bar, parts of it still stuck in my teeth. It felt good to have something in my stomach then, to keep me grounded on the Earth. It was then that I understood what Wordsworth meant when he said, “in this moment there is life and food / For future years.”[1] Not food like my granola bar, but food like peace in a world where there is so little of it. So much conflict, war, and destruction stretching all the way back to the ancient days of King Arthur, the legend of Tintagel. I wonder if the soldiers ate the Cornwall coast—filled their stomachs with its peace—to keep them up those late nights defending the castle against the invading Anglo-Saxons.
I sat on the edge of the white cliffs of Dover staring out at the open sea while hearing the wind whistle around me. I see a young boy jostling a teacup nearby, practically dancing. He is telling his mother a cup awaits her inside the lighthouse, his voice hardly distinguishable above the cup rattling against the intricately decorated saucer. I tried to imagine seeing airplanes overhead, ripping through orange clouds and endangering the boats in the water and the soldiers deep in the rock. The airplanes were still there in a way, but so was that cup of tea. So was the notebook in my hand. This was the moment I knew Arnold was wrong to say that “the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams / … / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.”[2] There are airplanes, but there is also tea. There are “ignorant armies” that “clash by night,” but there is also the sea that clashes against pure white cliffs, a beacon for the boats escaping France.
I sat on the edge of a hill in Idwal nestled between Snowdonia mountains in tears as the sun faded behind the mountains closer to the sea. Heaven felt like a short breath away. In and out just one more time and then seraphim and cherubim would surround me. I gripped the purple heather in my hand, astonished that its color was the same as my jacket. I heard no birds, no wind, nothing. I tried to listen but the only sound nearby was my own silent gasping. It was then I knew that “Nature, the gentlest mother, / … / With infinite affection / And infiniter care, / Her golden finger on her lip, / Wills silence everywhere.”[3] The silence I felt was both joy and sadness, giving me energy and siphoning it away at the same time. It’s the same silence one hears standing in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, its black solemness surrounded by bloodied poppies. Black and red—the colors of violence—pair so well with silence. It’s the same silence Christ heard while bleeding out on his black cross;[4] Job while in the midst of his dark suffering.[5] This silence I’m speaking of is the sound of a soul stilling, in anticipation of a divine movement one cannot comprehend but hopes for; the divine movement Christ and Job were both praying for. It was that same divine movement I felt at that edge.
I stood at the edge of a rock somewhere on the Isle of Skye because I could not sit and stare anymore; I wanted to get to the next edge. The lush, still-wet greenery overcrowded my sight, but the heather created a path before me to the Old Man of Storr.
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.[6]
Taking a path to an edge is difficult and there will be conflict whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual; but choosing to take that path to an edge will make “all the difference” in life. These paths will lead you to an edge where potential resides. At the edge one can find peace, silence, wisdom, and experience. The edge may be the edge of a cliff, chapel, mountain, porch, or book, but they are all worth the climb. So, in the slightly overzealous words of Jack Kerouac, “In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
Footnotes
[1] William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798.”
[2] Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach.”
[3] Emily Dickinson, “Nature, the Gentlest Mother.”
[4] Creswell and Haykel, Mark 15:34
[5] Job 23:8
[6] Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
