Camping next to the car, alone

I drove out to a stretch of public land in early July with a tent, a stove, and four books I did not finish. I did not see another human being for three days.

What the silence is actually like

The first six hours are loud. Your phone is silent but your head is not; the inbox you closed is still running in there, the unfinished conversation is still chewing on itself, the next week is rehearsing itself in your imagination. Six hours is the floor.

After that it gets quieter. Day two is the day the actual silence shows up. You notice the wind has a shape. You notice the bird in the brush across the camp is a particular bird that does a particular thing at a particular time of day. You notice that you are not, in fact, in a hurry, even though you have spent twenty years of your life being in a hurry.

Day three you stop noticing things and you start being in them. I do not have better words for this. The phrase 'being in them' is the closest I can get.

I drove home Sunday and was back in the inbox within two hours of pulling into the driveway. Which is its own kind of data.