Valor and Compassion
On Writing and Living
Keeping Vigil
Fire tower image courtesy of Chief Logan and the Helena, Montana Fire Department Archive, http://www.helenahistory.org
When I got past the awkward early-reading stage and had developed enough skill to immerse myself in books, I discovered the joy of getting up before dawn and reading under the covers with a flashlight. My dad rose early too, but he headed downstairs to do laundry and start breakfast preparations, and I savored the quiet before others awakened. In my window, the sapphire sky paled, shot through with orange, and the birds celebrated the sun’s return. I drank deep from the nectar of being alone.
Since then, I became a connoisseur of solitude, but not the passive kind, a vigilant solitude, a soul-forge.
My spouse and I share a recurrent private joke about how, if we hadn’t gotten married, I’d planned on living in a remote wilderness fire tower. When a busy day at our medical office comes to an end, he teases me, “There’s still time to escape to that fire tower!” I’d read somewhere about fire spotters living for a month or two at a time in these towers towers far from human company, dipping back into relationships only when hiking back to the nearest town for supplies. The prospect appealed to me, lover of solitude that I was, as did the noble purpose: preserving wilderness from ravaging fires.
There’s a scene in the movie version of The Lord of the Rings that never fails to ignite my old longings for courageous aloneness in a remote place. The scene begins when the plucky Pippin climbs up the back side of Minas Tirith’s beacon tower and manages to set fire to the tinder, against the Steward of Gondor’s wishes. Then the camera follows the path of that signal fire to the next woodpile, where a patient, vigilant guardian waits…for how long, we don’t know. We continue to follow the camera moving over the landscape as each beacon-spotter responds to the summons from the now distant flame on the horizon. At last, Aragorn espies the nearest bonfire, rushes down from the tower, and proclaims, “The beacons are lit! Minas Tirith calls for aid.”
I’ve seen the movie several times, and I always imagine myself as guardian of the beacon atop the snowiest, most challenging slope, climbing up to keep my vigil, blowing on my hands in the cold, waiting for a signal that might never come–and there it is, quick, do your duty, numb hands fumbling at the tinderbox, will it light, yes, yes, the tinder’s caught!
Cold, brave, and alone, the nameless beacon watcher answers the call.
There’s something beyond admirable about somebody facing hardship, doing a salutary deed, and receiving no accolades for it. How I admire that selfless something.
Few of us may get the chance to write in a wilderness fire tower, especially as technological advances are phasing out the need for human fire spotters. But we writers do our share of waiting, sometimes in the cold and dark, even if that’s just a mental state, should one’s writing space be well-lit and warm. When you send a query and/or material to an agent, you wait. Let’s say the agent agrees to represent you–the beacon’s lit, hooray! But then you wait some more as the agent shops it around. Then, after that second acceptance, there are more exchanges and more waiting: an editor’s letter detailing changes to make, proofreading notes, a pre-publication copy to examine…you wait for each of these. (For my friends and colleagues who’ve self-published books, or who’ve published chapbooks or scholarly books through a university press or other small publisher, you’ve got your own varieties of waiting to do, and things to wait for; I don’t mean to neglect you; I just haven’t experienced these varieties.)
Advice abounds on what to do while you’re waiting. Work on your next project! Take a breather and concentrate on some other endeavor: making music, fixing up your garden, completing that old motorcycle repair! Spend time with the family you’ve promised to do things with when you’re done with writing that interminable book!
But still we check the email for the fourth, fifth, sixth time. Hasn’t the agent/publisher/editor gotten back to us yet? The person in the tower rubs their eyes, aching from staring at the horizon. Is that a glint? Just the sun setting.
No matter how busy our exterior lives are, no matter how filled with other people–co-workers, those we help (patients, clients, customers), friends and family, the people we meet by chance on the bus or in the grocery store–a writer’s waiting tends to happen alone, as if in the mind’s own fire/beacon tower.
How do we turn this solitary watching into something brave, noble, purposeful?
Lots of boring, purposeless waiting happens in life: shuffling from foot to foot on a line, or slouching in a one-size-fits-nobody plastic chair waiting for your number to light up on a screen. All that advice about waiting for answers from the writing/publishing world exists, perhaps, to remind us of two things: first, to help us not lose sight of the magnificent goal (getting your book into readers’ hands) and second, that family, friends, work, leisure activities, nature, etc. aren’t extras that intrude on our writing life but are life just as much as the act of creation is.
A shadow-side exists to the old romantic trope of the solitary writer. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when books enjoyed a wider circulation and more readers than they had in previous centuries, most writers were people abundant in wealth and free time, to the extent that they didn’t need to work at other jobs and could devote time to their art. They also depended on others to provide life’s necessities so they could concentrate on their work. I still get pained when I recall the poet William Wordsworth expressing his gratitude to those wonderful hands (belonging, implied if not stated, to his mother, sister, and possibly a domestic employee or two) who fed him and looked after his home so he didn’t have to interrupt his writing and rambles in the lake country to do the dishes. He and people like him were granted the luxury of living in their isolated tower among other people who quietly ensured they could work uninterrupted. They dreamed their way into a fantasy wilderness; they built their towers of retreat on the shoulders of their support staff. It’s one thing for family members and friends to offer their support; it’s another to assume they’ll give it or to demand it.
Waiting can offer us opportunities to grow stronger inside, to continue creating, to tighten our connections with those we love. It can also wear us down. If we conceive of waiting as a spiritual practice, or as a martial art, or something else deliberate and devoted, then we’re more likely to emerge from the experience as better people–determined, not depleted.
Valor and Compassion 
Love this phrase: “a vigilant solitude, a soul-forge.” Another gorgeous piece, my friend. I know this waiting well, and the lusciousness of solitude.
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Thank you, my dear friend! I’m so glad that, with the current popularity of insightful books like Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, more people are coming to understand how nourishing (and delicious) solitude can be.
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