My beetle study at the Bowdoin Scientific Station this summer required that I set and collect traps on an uninhabited island for a few hours a day. I had never been so utterly alone. After the Kent Island dingy dropped me off and disappeared into the inlet, there was not a vestige of humanity to be seen, heard, or even felt. On some days, when the mist reduced my visibility to a 20-meter radius, I could not even see land from my foggy prison. It's the closest I've ever been to where Shel Silverstein says "the sidewalk ends."
For the first couple of trips, I had to talk or sing to myself out loud while I was digging my pitfall traps to constantly reassure myself of my own existence. I was actually afraid that my brain would cease to function if I wasn't actively thinking about useful things. My interior monologue was the only radio station, so I impulsively turned up the volume in order to mask the silence. Gradually, I learned to be amused by the ingenious forms of employment conceived by my peripatetic mind. Sometimes I thought about things. My favorite colors. Problems with French immigration policy. Sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I'd dance. Nap. Decide what I wanted to do with my life. Trail a carabid beetle through the marsh. Devise a practical joke. Remember a verse of poetry. These digressions told me volumes about who I was, how I formed my thoughts and my answers to the controversial questions to which I hesitated to respond in public. There were moments, especially when the sun was bright enough to see each smooth pebble through the clear waves, when I was supremely and inexplicably happy.
You should see peoples' faces when I say I spent the summer on an island with 13 people, almost no electricity, no hot water, a sleeping bag, a few pairs of pants and 10 shirts. But life on Kent was anything but frugal. Rather, it was indulgent. My mind stretched its underdeveloped legs, meandered, paused, ruminated, exploded, and sprinted away. I experienced unfettered self-awareness. Nature did not tell me what I should, could, or must do. Nor did my peers; everything they learned about me in those months came from my own willing actions or verbalizations of my inner monologues. My outward and inward self became one and the same.
The week of re-entry into society was jarring. I got headaches from straining to hear myself amidst a world that was just too noisy, where my brain had to process so much stuff. That's the only word vague enough to describe it. Every single person and object in the world bombarded my mind with agendas, obligations, and wishes—as if I would perish without constant distraction. Everybody's clothing, behavior, accent, profession, and brand-name sunglasses spoke to me before I could digest the actual words of the individual, much less form a thought of my own. I missed the clarity of my own voice. My solitude.
Now if you see me on campus, you will note that I have neither renounced all my worldly possessions nor fashioned a hut in the Bowdoin Pines. I'm no misanthrope. I love people, parties, poetry, good conversation, and going to the movies. Thoreau's "friendship of the seasons" just isn't going to cut it after a while. However, I can be far more lonesome in a Bowdoin day scheduled to the minute than I ever was on Kent Island. Sure, I see plenty of people, but when your brain is hyperstimulated by all of the etiquette codes you are obligated to interpret and display on a daily basis, interactions and thoughts can become (as Thoreau might call them) "cheap." There simply isn't room left for the genuine.
Thankfully, solitude sowed a few shy seeds of rebellion. I don't always succeed in resisting conformity, but Kent Island has taught me that life can be wonderful and complex without society's noise. Solitude will neither define my lifestyle nor be my most "companionable" companion, as Thoreau claims, but it is a powerful tool. It has taught me how to listen for my voice in a world of perpetual fireworks and constant commentary. If Bowdoin wants to craft students who are independent thinkers, solitude should be some sort of core requirement. I think Rousseau, who observes that "the man accustomed to the ways of society is always outside himself and knows how to live only in the opinions of others," would back me up on this one. Being a social chameleon does allow you certain advantages, but if you want to become a truly independent and analytical thinker, find solitude.
How? "What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?" asks Thoreau. I now respond: a space far enough away in time and space so that his own thoughts are all he hears, a space far enough away to experience himself in a context without society's incessant analysis. Preferably for a long enough period that his outward behaviors and opinions become unconsciously those of his own interior monologue. Nature serves as a useful setting. However, I realize that not everyone has the means or the time to "go find solitude" for three months in the Bay of Fundy. Which is why I feel incredibly blessed to have unknowingly seized the opportunity. One summer was a life investment. Because once you have lived in true solitude, you may not have to go as far away to seek it again.
When my voice is drowned out by the world's cacophony, I imagine myself away to the lonely island and think, "What would I shout to the wind and the terns and the seaside goldenrod? That was where I was undisputed master of myself, where I heard only one voice, and where I will come upon honest answers." Nobody can truly find me there because nobody I know has ever been. Besides, a cozy fog has just rolled in. The Kent Islanders are the only ones who can navigate it and they aren't coming for another hour because I have asked them not to. And only sometimes, by equating this island sanctuary with my subconscious, I can revisit a moment of my precious solitude.