Finding silence

I was woken up this morning by a semi-trailer idling below my bedroom window. This set the tone for the day. Once the truck left, the hydrolic lift being used on the renovations next door beeped its way up and down delivering noisy sheets of tin to the rooftop. All of this, combined with the usual noise of living on a main road where the trucks going by literally make the house shake, set me over the edge today. I decided to abandon the house in favour of a swim. Usually, even if I cannot find quiet and calm anywhere else, I can find it under the water while swimming laps. Usually, but not today. Today a workman decided to repair something with a hammer right next to the lane I was swimming in. Disappointing to say the least! It made me homesick for the desert, for the space and the stillness, for the silence that allows you to really hear things both around you and within.
Oscar Kawagley, my favorite Alaskan author, talked to me when I was there about how we need to make an effort every day to 'quiet the mind'. He suggested that it actually takes us about 20 minutes of silence to quiet the mind and focus on thought, to allow yourself to 'wander into the inside of ecology'. I think that's what I was doing all of those mornings and afternoons in the desert when I went walking. I think that's what happens when I swim (usually!) So on days like today when finding that silence seems impossible I feel horribly out of balance with myself and the world.