“The click of the cottage door was a sound too final for a place dedicated to silent beginnings,” Mandy began, curled on the opposite end of the couch from Tim.
“Hold on,” Tim said, setting down the book he was reading. “You’re starting in media res. I have questions. First, a silent retreat? You? The woman who audibly narrates her own search for car keys?”
Mandy rolled her eyes. “It was a transformative experience. Can I continue?”
“Proceed,” he said, steepling his fingers like a therapist.
“Okay. So I’m on the porch, barefoot, and I’ve just locked myself out. I’m staring at a brass door knob that was now useless. I had come there looking for a key to open up my life, to escape the cage and now I can't even get back in the cottage. It was right after… well, after everything had changed. After my marriage ended. I didn't know what I was looking for, or running from, really. Just… silence. I needed to see what was left when all the usual noise stopped.”
“Ah,” Tim said, nodding slowly. “The universe’s way of ensuring you really got the silent part down. No keys, no phone, just… you.”
“Exactly. For a moment, that familiar city-panic fluttered in my chest. A frantic inventory of options, but there was no one to call. Shouting was, of course, out of the question. I walked off the porch, found a small path leading deeper into the woods, just kept walking, barefoot, until the trees opened up.”
“So you literally walked away from the problem and made a spontaneous detour into the arboreal unknown. A profound and very bold choice.”
“But then I just… let it go,” she continued. “The panic subsided as quickly as it came, replaced by the forest’s own quiet logic. This was, after all, why I had come. To be stripped of solutions and forced to simply be. I called myself, in the private narrative of my own mind, Mandy of the woods. A new title I was trying on for size. And Mandy of the woods would not be defeated by a locked door. It was like a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, and I let it out as I laid down in the moss of the forest floor.”
“The patented Mandy maneuver,” Tim noted. “When faced with an unsolvable problem, decide it’s no longer a problem and become a geographical feature instead. Did you sprout roots?”
“And Tim,” she continued, ignoring him, “it was incredible. Not a small patch, but this vast, soft carpet, the size of several rooms, nestled between the gnarled roots of an ancient oak, shaded by other ancient trees in a hidden meadow. It was a vibrant, impossible green, looking plush and cool as velvet. The world shifted. The scent of damp earth, decaying leaves, and fresh pine filled my senses. I could feel the faint, slow thrum of the forest floor, a vibration of life too subtle for standing creatures to notice. I was no longer a guest at the woods; I was part of its sprawling, breathing furniture. The problem of the locked door seemed a trivial concern from another world. The quiet started to hum.”
“Hum?”
“Yes. The tiny buzz of insects, the rustle of individual leaves as if they were whispering secrets, the far-off sigh of the wind. Everything got louder. All the thoughts in my head, the old narratives… they weren't just background noise anymore. They were there. Present. It was unsettling at first, but then… it was just what was.”
Tim was quiet for a moment, letting her words hang in the air. “So you were Mandy of the Moss. A superhero, finally.”
She threw a cushion at him. “A sound interrupted my reverie. A low, rumbling. Getting closer.”
“The forest’s own delivery truck?”
“A golf cart,” she said, a smile playing on her lips. “A faded, butterscotch gold golf cart, piled impossibly high with sticks and fallen branches that it resembled a mobile beaver dam. And driven by this woman, Nancy.”
“Let me guess,” Tim interrupted, leaning forward. “Nancy. The most devastatingly practical of all woodland names. No-nonsense. I should have known. Her hair was woven from birch bark and she spoke only in riddles of the ancient woods.”
“Her hair was in a practical braid of salt-and-pepper hair slung over one shoulder, and she was the caretaker. She stopped the cart, the engine sputtering to a halt, and looked down at me with an expression that was not of surprise, but a gardener discovering a rare, but not entirely unexpected, mushroom. She killed the motor. The profound silence of the woods rushed back in. She dismounted, her boots making soft thuds on the earth. She pointed a thumb at me. 'Out?' she whispered, her voice raspy like dry leaves.”
Tim sat back, impressed. “She’s the Gandalf of this story, isn’t she? She shows up exactly when she’s needed, smelling faintly of pine and motor oil.”
“Exactly. She offered a hand, and I climbed into the golf cart, bits of moss still clinging to my hair. The ride back to the cottage was slow, the cart rumbling along the winding path, the quiet forest giving way to the cottage itself. When we reached the porch, she pulled out this old, heavy brass key, quite normal really, but it worked. She pushed the door open and then looked back at me. 'In?' Nancy whispered, a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. I went inside. She gave me this little amused look before she left. Her family owns the land, runs this place, you know. Hundred acres of ancestral land, a mile down the road from where she lives. They have a print shop too, but this… this is their passion. Helping people get away to go towards.”
“A look that said, ‘I see you, fellow human, but also, I see you,’” Tim translated.
“Maybe. Anyway, the rest of the retreat passed like a time lapse of a waterfall or ocean waves, it was a blur of peaceful meditation and quiet walks. But my thoughts kept returning to the woman on the golf cart, a figure of pure competence and earthy purpose, a true native of the quiet I was only visiting. So on the last day, as guests were beginning to pack and the vow of silence gently dissolved, I found her by a woodshed, methodically sorting her collected sticks into piles by size and type. The golf cart stood nearby, empty and waiting for its next load.”
“The sticks have a system?” Tim asked, genuinely fascinated. “Of course, they do. Nancy wouldn’t abide a chaotic woodpile. Was it Dewey Decimal?”
“I don’t know,” Mandy laughed. “But I walked up to her. 'I'm Mandy. From cottage seven. The moss,' I said. Nancy’s face broke into a craggy smile. 'The moss. Right. Glad you found your way in.' That’s when I asked her for a job. I told her, ‘I feel more at home here than anywhere else.’ And I did. More than in the farm, more than raising rabbits, more than growing fresh produce and trading goods. More than being a good wife, a good mother, a good community member.”
Tim went quiet for a moment, his usual stream of commentary dammed up. He looked at her, his expression soft. “You just walked up to the Stick Queen of the Silent Forest and asked to be her apprentice?”
“I did,” Mandy said, her voice softer now, too. “Nancy stopped her sorting and leaned against the shed, studying me with clear, steady eyes. Her soft hands, her hopeful face, and then out at the vast, demanding woods. Probably noticing the complete lack of calluses, she said, ‘The work is hard, and the quiet gets loud, sometimes.’ Then she said, ‘Be here Monday. 7 a.m. We’ll start with the sticks.’”
But I didn't take the job. I went home.
Tim blinked. “You… didn’t take the job? But you just said you felt more at home there than anywhere else.”
“I did. But I went back to my life. To the ordinary. And for a long time, everything looked the same. The same sun rose over the fields, the same flour dusted the counter, the same questions were asked at bedtime. But it wasn't the same. Something in me had shifted. The old frantic buzz, the way my mind would seize on every little demand or every spilled milk… it would still happen, but then, sometimes, there would be this pause. Just a fraction of a second, where I could hear the quiet beneath the noise. Like the rustle of leaves in the moss, even when I was standing in my kitchen.
"Problems that used to feel like brick walls—a bill, a child’s sudden illness, a forgotten ingredient—they didn’t always feel so overwhelming anymore. Sometimes, in that pause, I’d just see them. Plainly. Not good, not bad, just… there. And when you see something for what it is, without all the old fear or frustration clouding it, it’s amazing how much clearer the path forward becomes. It wasn't about running from what was, but about learning to be with it. To shape it, using what was available. I didn't even realize I was doing it at first. I'd justfind myself reacting differently, more calmly, and then later, sometimes years later, I'd trace it back to that meadow, to Nancy, to those sticks. It was like something in the woods had whispered a secret, and I spent the next few years figuring out what it meant, putting it into practice without even realizing it. And then, one day, I'd catch myself, and it would just… surprise me, how much had changed.”
For what might have been the first time in his life, Tim was silent for a long moment. The book forgotten in his hand. He looked at her, really looked at her.
“So you went all that way,” he said softly. “To a silent retreat, to get locked out, to wander and to be found in a mossy meadow by a woman of the woods… just to realize you didn't need to escape. You didn't take Nancy’s job, Mandy. You took your life back instead. And though you didn't know it at the time, that whole experience—the moss, the sticks, Nancy’s quiet wisdom—it was your education. Your own honorary degree from the University of Moss and Sticks.”