The beauty of quiet.
Took a few-day hiatus with my mom in honor of her birthday.
My mom has always dreamed of having her own treehouse so last year, for her birthday, I bought her a one-night stay in a treehouse in San Jose.
She loved it.
She loved it so much that I think I inadvertently shot myself in the foot for future birthdays. A candle won’t be able to top a taste of the fulfillment of one of her lifelong dreams. Slowly, but surely, I think a unique Airbnb stay thirty feet in the air is becoming our annual tradition.
This year, we headed up to Clearlake to something affectionately titled in its Airbnb listing as: “The Sanctuary Treehouse.”
It lived up to its name.
My mom and I arrived to be greeted by the host and led around the expansive campsite that he ran. He showed us the small bathroom complex on the campground and led us a quarter mile up the hill to where the Sanctuary Treehouse was tucked away beyond a giant rock and patch of forest. It suspended over a steep incline and rested between two trees overlooking a babbling creek.
It was a little box with no insulation whatsoever, but the views were to die for.
Immediately upon arrival, both my mom and I took immediate notice of the quiet surrounding us. Even on an active campground with families visiting and others living there all-year-round, there was total calm. I felt my internal world, that felt like a spinning top when I left home earlier that day, begin to slowly wobble, wobble, wobble until it toppled over into rest.
I decelerated and breathed in fresh air for the first time in a long time.
I didn’t realize how noisy daily life had become until I stepped away from it.
The most anchoring moments happened when I was walking the gravel path to the bathroom and back. The crunch of rocks beneath my shoes, the pace I settled into as I strolled up and down uneven paths—walking in the woods is a beautifully nostalgic sensory experience for me—one that I didn’t realize would fill me up in the way it did.
The quiet of the trees, the gentle greeting of hello my shoes made to the ground below me—it enveloped and nourished my soul.
I don’t know how one cannot fathom a spiritual space beyond us when given the luxury of breathing in nature.