Bradt/Independent on Sunday Travel-Writing Competition 2011
The Art of Stillness
I thought I knew stillness. When the electricity goes off in my village and the merengue music stops mid-step; when I spent a night in a tent in the North-African desert; when we pulled out of the port earlier this evening and left behind the machinery and the men loading cargo ships bound for Venezuela. But there had always been some background noise to reassure me that I hadn't been struck deaf. A dog barking, a mother calling out to her kids to come inside; the crackle of the campfire and the faint hum from my friend's iPod; and tonight, the burr of the engine and the fascinating tri-lingual chatter of the crew as we set off up the Río Escondido.
Not now. The engine has died and it's too dark to fix it, so we are waiting for daylight. The dense stillness is unnerving. We are too far from land to hear the usual animal noises of the night, out of range of mobile phone signals and, as I'm the only westerner on the boat, there are no iPods. I say the only westerner because my best friend no longer counts.
We arrived here together, a couple of idealistic Londoners wanting to 'do something' with our lives. But that was ten years ago, and while I had got bored after a few years and moved on to do something else, she had turned native, married a local and seemed settled. Unlike me, she had mastered the art of stillness.
I'm not by any means hyper-active, hypo-active perhaps. I've climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and forgone all modern comforts in search of peace, but the Londoner in me never lets me be truly still. Even in moments such as this I find it impossible to switch of the sound of my own thoughts and just be. It's fashionable amongst travellers to have spent some time in Asia and learned the art of meditation, but all over South America and Africa, people are just skilled at emptying their minds; they just don't give it a name. It is as natural and as easy to them as breathing and far more alien and difficult for a Londoner to master than any foreign language.
How long have we been drifting? What time is it? If we arrive much later than planned, should I try to stay awake until night-time or get unpacked and have a siesta as planned? Why can't I just settle down like her? Will I ever meet the soul-mate who understands why I need to live like this? Better not to think about such things, try to sleep until morning. Her choice of husband was a strange one, but at least it was a choice. In my early twenties it was cool to drift through life, but my early twenties have turned to my early thirties and I'm still no clearer...SLEEP!
As the boat had pulled out, I had felt that familiar sense of contentment that mine was more than an ordinary life. I was born in the western world and had learned to appreciate what that meant while I was still young enough to make the most of it. If I worked hard in between trips, I could go anywhere on this earth, experience anything. Every other person on this boat was here because they couldn't afford the airfare. And in the air above, tourists were flying in to the Caribbean because they couldn't afford the time. We are all poor in one way or another, including me.
Every other person on this boat has something that I may never get hold of. The art of stillness. The ability to sit. Not to sit and wait. Not to sit and think. Just to sit. Not to philosophise about life and being adrift on a boat. Just to sit and be still.
About the author – Dawn Curtis
Born in the north-east of England, Dawn Curtis first moved to Nicaragua as a volunteer worker in 2003. She had caught the travel bug while living in London and has never managed to shake it off. Recently she has managed to start 'living the dream' of working over the internet as a translator and thus be free to live between the big city of London and her adopted little village of San Isidro in Nicaragua. Of course, that means she needs a third continent for the holiday home.
Judges' comments
Jonathan Lorie, Director, Travellers' Tales