My long-held vision of living a monastic life has always included a cabin deep in the woods to which I can escape and be alone without the bother of humanity. I have dreamed in detail about this cabin and the life I might enjoy there. This cabin is the only thing missing from my so-called monastic life.  But is it?????

Yes, there is something deep in my being that longs to be deep in the woods, in my own little cabin, safe and sequestered away from human beings. I grew up with a cabin such as this – one my paternal grandfather built from a kit and placed deep into the woods of his parents’ 1800’s homestead. Some of my fondest memories of childhood are of the times we spent at the cabin “up at the lake.” It was there we were free to explore: picking wild blueberries, catching frogs, building forts out of fallen branches, fishing off the dock, learning to canoe, and swimming at the beach. It was a wild, untamed place where we were allowed to be even more feral than we already were as children of the 70’s.

My favorite thing about being “up at the lake” was the quiet. Deep in the woods the quiet has its own nature. It is still.  It is hush. But between the silence you could hear the rustle of leaves, the chirping of long skinny green frogs, the twittering of birds, and the call of the loon. The silence in the woods is one in which, when you listen deeply, you can hear the earth breathe.

The cabin in the woods provided me with the foundational experience of that kind of silence. This is the kind of silence I long for. Heretofore I believed that the only way to experience this kind of silence was deep in the woods in a cabin like the one my grandpa built. Life, however, has not cooperated in fulfilling the dream of my own cabin in the woods.  Instead, I find myself living in an apartment in an 1800’s remodeled school building smack dab in the middle of the bustling downtown of Oshkosh, Wisconsin (as bustling as a downtown can be in a town of only 65,000). Not quite a cabin, but a sanctuary, nonetheless.

The reality is that I know myself and one of the things I know about myself is that I do enjoy certain urban amenities. Oshkosh, I recently learned, falls into the category of “15-minute cities.” This means that everything one might need is within a 15-minute drive from home. In Oshkosh, it’s more like 3-10 minutes. I appreciate this kind of convenience. Even more so, I find I thrive in an environment where there is a quaint but artsy coffee shop along with easy access to creativity. As conservative as Oshkosh can be, there is an active, artistic, subculture. These are my people and where I find comfort and companionship. (companionship for me meaning, people I can relate to and have intelligent conversations with). Whereas Oshkosh was never in my life-plan, I’ve been here for just over 30 years and it has become a home.

While I still fantasize about running away to a cabin deep in the woods, I have found that the silence I discovered in nature can also be found in the hustle and bustle of a semi-urban community and that I need look no further than outside my office window for the trees that allow my soul to breathe. As it turns out, I’m not missing anything. Everything I need to live a monastic life has been right here all along.