The opening lines to the classic country song, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, by Hank Williams evokes memories of hearing that provocative sound in the very still of the night. I remember hearing that sound as a child in bed since we lived within about a mile from a train crossing in Kansas. The wind had to be in the right direction to hear it that far away, which made it evoke a sense of spiritual resonance. That sound of a train whistle at major crossways can only resonate at a distance and usually late at night. If it’s carried on a strong north wind in winter time the feeling is even more emotional. I hadn’t heard the sound for many years after leaving home, but now I can hear it once again here at home in North Carolina. It not only conjures up the same emotions, but also memories of my long-ago childhood. It’s one of those extraordinary sounds that touches the soul. And it can trigger nostalgia, remembering who we were and validating our own identity.
That sound evoked loneliness in
old Hank and obviously many others related to the lyrics. But loneliness is a state of sadness, while
solitude is a healthy state of meaningful self-reflection. It’s a state of being alone without being
lonely. You can be lonely in a crowd,
but you can’t experience solitude there.
There are some other sounds that have the capacity to touch the solitary soul and evoke emotions of well being at the deepest level of human life. One of the first that comes to mind is another one from my childhood of sitting on a dock and hearing the call of a distant loon over a moonlit placid Minnesota Northwoods lake. I’ve been walking up a vanishing windrow of midwestern hedge trees hunting bob white quail and hearing their calls as they gather the covey together. And many of us have quietly listened to the soft coo of mourning doves at daylight. Then there’s the rhythmic song of cicadas in the trees on summer evenings while sitting with family outside on a wrap-around porch. I’ve also been sitting on a rural river bank at sunset while the crickets and frogs serenaded all of us. And who of us has been touched by the experience of sitting near the ocean at any time of the day apart from the noise of civilization and hearing the rhythm of the breaking waves on shore that takes us back to the first nine months of life in the watery womb?
A few other sounds that have touched my soul include the wind and ancestral spirits racing through pine needles at the ancient Mesa Verde ruins in Colorado, standing on the prairies of eastern Colorado and western Kansas and hearing the distant thunder of an approaching summer storm, and standing outside our home in central Kansas as a winter snow mixed with sleet gently falls upon frozen ground. Distant church bells and windchimes touch my soul along with the whirring drone of an overhead airplane that slowly fades away along with all of nature on a late autumn afternoon.
It occurs to me that all of these reflective
sounds that have touched deep within my soul were experienced outside in God’s
creation. Perhaps that’s why I still
enjoy the solitude of being there.
