Into the Woods

“RADIO SILENCE Book of Walks” has a stillness to it. It’s like a capacious stopping point, a place where it’s safe to feel your way into the crannies of loss and love.

Loss does not, at first, feel roomy. How do you go on? How, even, do you breathe and eat and talk to others? In time, you start to excavate, like the landscapers at Skyline Park. You begin to find a path in the airless dark, discover markers. In time, there are places to put some of that pain and for new growth to emerge.

Years ago, I hiked in the Blue Hills every week with my friend Jim Moran. He was a Buddhist, a writer, an actor, an Air Force vet, and a salesman who sold chemicals and solvents to autobody shops. He was a good man who struggled and learned and tenderized as he grew. Every evening, in the days before Twitter, Jim wrote an email to a select group of friends, “Notes from the Quarry Bud-duh,” distilling his day into a koan reflecting on the pain, joy, and ridiculousness of life.” - excerpt from Cate McQuaid’s Substack, Ocean in a Drop