From The Innkeepers

On Enjoying the Silence

Last week, my Facebook memories greeted me with a quote I shared a year ago. The quote was by Elizabeth Gilbert and it was surrounded by beautiful illustrations of vines and colorful flowers. It read: “I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent—and working at a pace so slow—that I would be able to hear myself living.” I must have posted that in a moment of desperation in the midst of our preparations to move. It was just a couple weeks after my last month of school. We were purging and packing and coordinating last-minute repairs and upgrades to the house. Those last months of getting our house ready to sell and our daughter ready for college were fueled by cortisol and caffeine.

A year ago, I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to live in a place so silent that I would be able to hear myself living. But here we are. We had a quiet, slow-paced, and utterly pleasant June. It was a month that revealed one of the greatest gifts this place offers: a space to just be and see what there is to see.

Aaron’s hummingbird feeders have been the source of our greatest entertainment this month. The first day he put them out, a passel of tiny birds arrived, and they’ve been buzzing around here ever since. We have a feeder on the deck outside our bedroom and watching hummingbird drama has become one of my new favorite pastimes. When we lived in Ann Arbor, we did have hummingbirds, but they kept their distance if we approached. These country hummingbirds are not afraid of us. They buzz right past our heads from their homebase tree to the feeder. Being able to watch them up close, I’ve learned that they are quite territorial and frequently get into tiffs. When access to the feeder is in dispute, they zip around and chirp and chatter at each other, arguing for their right to be there. And their high-speed maneuvers sometimes result in a screeching noise that sounds like air brakes. A little research confirmed that is exactly what is happening! They fan their tailfeathers to come to a sudden mid-air stop and it creates a little screech that sounds like squealing brakes. We also noticed that the males sometimes zoom repeatedly back and forth in a smile-shaped arc, air braking at the top of each swing while a female is perched on the feeder. It’s quite comical to us, but evidently to a female hummingbird, this courtship display is the avian equivalent of a smooth pickup line. 

Another happy bird surprise was the arrival of a green heron. I was first alerted to this goofy little water bird when I noticed a periodic shriek (something between a crow and a high-pitched dinosaur) coming from the trees near the pond. Since I couldn’t see the culprit, I turned on my trusty Merlin bird app to record the call and discovered it was a green heron. When I finally saw what he looked like, I couldn’t help but laugh at this bird. I first saw him standing near the pond, fishing with his neck stretched out and sporting a punk rock haircut. Seriously, Google this guy. He looks pretty normal when he’s hunched into himself, but when he stretches out his neck, he’s straight outta Dr. Seuss. 

The highlight of our wildlife comedy this month was a visit from a groundhog. We were sitting at the kitchen table in our apartment one morning and spotted a large groundhog through the window. It was way down near the end of the driveway, standing up on its hind legs like a prairie dog, scoping the place out from the road. Suddenly it dropped to all fours and started loping up the lawn along the driveway. Knowing that these critters can do considerable damage if they decide to burrow under a foundation, Aaron went out the front door and confronted this unwelcome visitor, who had already made his way to the grove of maple trees in front of the house. “Hey! You gotta turn around, buddy,” he said firmly. The groundhog stopped in his tracks, wheeled around, and sprinted back to the road at a shocking speed. To help you imagine this scene, think about Punxsutawney Phil and how poorly he is built for speed. Then imagine him booking it 50 yards to the road in 3 seconds flat. This is something we would have never experienced in the city. 

Here’s what has struck me several times this month: the stark contrast between the lives we used to know and this new way of life, and the fact that these two types of lives are always going on simultaneously. While I was merging onto the highway at 70 miles per hour at 7 am every morning, not too far from here in the agricultural community of Stanwood, there were Amish buggies traveling 7 miles per hour down 5 Mile Road on their way to neighboring farms. While I was making my way through crowded hallways of screaming middle schoolers, surely there were also moments when the singular screech of a hummingbird’s air brakes was the only thing interrupting the silence around here. While Ryan was solving a seating dilemma in a busy Manhattan restaurant, a foal on a farm somewhere in Norwich Township was taking its first evening run, testing out its new legs. And while Aaron was tending to his dahlia garden in our city backyard surrounded by the sounds of sirens, booming bass, and the honking horns of car alarms, my Aunt Marcia was weeding the inn’s front gardens to the cooing of mourning doves and the trill of red-winged blackbirds. 

Around the same time I posted that Elizabeth Gilbert quote last summer, I was going through boxes of old memories when I found the ticket stub of the first concert I attended. On June 28, 1990, when I was fifteen years old, I traveled with a group of friends from our small town of Spring Arbor in Jackson County all the way to Pine Knob to see Depeche Mode. On a school night! At the time, one of their biggest hits was a song called “Enjoy the Silence.” Little did I know that sentiment would be a central theme of my life almost exactly 36 years later. The type of silence here at the inn is so ever-present that you only notice it when it’s broken. It is unique from my old life in that there is almost no background noise, so you notice the smallest of sounds: the bullfrogs twanging and mooing from the edges of the pond, the breeze blowing through the trees, a single-engine plane passing overhead. Our surroundings are so vast and quiet that you can sometimes hear a dog barking from half a mile away. Our nearest neighbors are at least two or three football fields away from us, and we can sometimes hear them talking in their yards. When you hear a car coming, you notice and wonder who it might be.

I have come to appreciate how the quiet around here draws my attention to things I’ve never noticed before. These little noticings are built-in reminders to be present. It reminds me of a quote by a famous philosopher I first became acquainted with in the late 1980s by the name of Ferris Bueller: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” I realize that the invitation to pause and be still is one of the greatest gifts the inn has to offer, and it is one of the reasons our guests find it to be so special. It is a place that invites you to stop and look around, both outside and inside yourself, and enjoy the silence.