OLD SCHOLARS

We had not been talking on the ascent and the only sound was a murmur from water in the stream below us. I saw Peter raise his hand to stop me and then he pointed to the misty col less than 30 yards above.

There at a clearing in the mist and outlined against the lighter sky behind stood a stag with antlers. For a minute or more it moved slowly from rock to rock oblivious of our presence until the mist closed and it was lost from view. That remains as a time which I shall never forget due to our senses being so heightened by the silence that surrounded us.

What I am trying to say is that although silence only directly relates to one of the senses, that of hearing, it improves the perception of the other senses.

It was Peter who introduced me to the work of an author called Nan Shepherd who died in 1981 having written four books (including a poetry anthology) in the 1930s followed by only one further book in the late 1940s entitled The Living Mountain. The manuscript for this book lay untouched for more than thirty years before being published in 1977.

In this short excerpt Nan Shepherd has been sleeping out of doors; her experience on waking is similar to Peter and Stewart’s seeing the stag:

‘ ... my eyes were closed, and now they are open, nothing more than that; and ten yards away from me a red deer is feeding in the dawn light. He moves without a sound. The world is entirely still. I too am still. Or am I? Did I move? He lifts his head, his nostrils twitch, we look at each other. Why did I let him meet my eyes? He is off. But not for far. He checks in his flight and eyes me again. This time I do not look at him. After a while he drops his head, reassured, and goes on feeding.’

Nan Shepherd spent hundreds of days and thousands of miles exploring the Cairngorms into which she went on foot in all seasons, by dawn, day, dusk and night, walking sometimes with friends, but mostly alone. She often spent nights alone on the mountains with or without a tent. The Living Mountain draws on her lifetime of mountain experiences and Peter appreciated that the long periods of silence she encountered enhanced her perception of the other senses. What is clear is that silence enabled her to discipline her mind and body to quiescence and that for the ear the most vital thing that can be listened to is silence.

‘Having disciplined mind and body to quiescence, l must discipline them also to activity. The senses must be used. For the ear, the most vital thing that can be listened to here is silence. To bend the ear to silence is to discover how seldom it is there. Always something moves. When the air is quite still, there is always running water; and up here that is a sound one can hardly lose, though on many stony parts of the plateau one is above the watercourses. But now and then comes an hour when the silence is all but absolute, and listening to it one slips out of time. Such a silence is not a mere negation of sound. It is like a new element, and if water is still sounding with a low far-off murmur, it is no more than the last edge of an element we are leaving, as the last edge of land hangs on the mariner’s horizon. Such moments come in mist, or snow, or a summer night (when it is too cool for the clouds of insects to be abroad), or a September dawn. In September dawns I hardly breathe - I am an image in a ball of glass. The world is suspended there, and I in it.

Once, on a night of such clear silence, long past midnight, lying awake outside the tent, my eyes on the plateau where an after wash of light was lingering, I heard in the stillness a soft, an almost imperceptible thud. It was enough to make me turn my head. There on the tent pole a tawny owl stared down at me. I could just discern his shape against the sky. I stared back. He turned his head about, now one eye upon me, now the other, then melted down into the air so silently that had I not been watching him, I could not have known he was gone. To have heard the movement of the midnight owl - that was rare, it was a minor triumph.’

Nan Shepherd through many years of practice trained herself to listen to silence, reaching a level of awareness that many of us can only imagine. Most people in the modern world rarely have the chance to hear and certainly not to listen to silence at all. But recent events gave us a rare opportunity to live through an absence of the usual sounds of everyday life.

When the Covid pandemic swept over us and lockdowns were imposed, the skies were empty of planes, the streets were almost without traffic, businesses and industries contracted and many people experienced a strange hush, a pause for the first time in the world outside.

When they could be outdoors, people began to hear and then to listen to this strange new world stripped of the usual overload of noise. They noticed the awakening of birdsong as the spring advanced, the different sounds of trees on a still or breezy day, the rustling of creatures previously unheard.

The deafening overlay of industrial society was replaced by gentler sounds and by silences.

The pandemic was a hammer blow to the world as we knew it and the aftermath continues, but out of it there came a pause, a quieter time, a chance for people to reconnect with a different world and a different way of being. We’ve heard from people how their lives were enriched, how they felt they grew emotionally and woke to a new way of hearing and seeing.

In a Meeting for Worship, we gather to join with others in silence, to be receptive and open to wisdom that may come to us. Silence for this community and this school is not a shutting out of the world, but about connecting with it positively and creatively.

Remembering Old Scholars

We were sad to hear of the passing of Marilyn Deakin who was a Scholar at Ackworth School 1950-54.

It is also with sadness that our friend and member of the East Coast Guild for so many years, Marjorie Bliss, passed away in February.

Our thoughts are with Marjorie’s and Marilyn’s families during these times.