The Sound of Silence

By Christopher Merrill '79

I made a Lenten pilgrimage to Athos, the Virgin Mother's Holy Mountain. A late snow had blanketed the region two days before I set out, and on the bus ride from Thessaloniki, I inwardly shivered at the patches of white edging the fields, the snowbound mountains thick with clouds.

In the gray dawn, the bus wended its way through villages and towns, making brief stops to leave bundles of newspapers outside kiosks and cafés. The monk across the aisle from me dozed off in the stuffy air, his beard resting on his chest.

At the sight of the Aegean, calm and lead-colored, a memory surfaced: I was lying on a hospital gurney, awaiting exploratory surgery, buoyant from the effects of a painkiller. I remembered watching the clock on the wall, cherishing its slow progress, wishing to put off for as long as possible the moment when the orderly came to wheel me into the operating room. The bus sped around a corner. The monk laid his head back against his seat. It occurred to me that my journey into faith might prove to be painful.

The sun was out by the time we arrived at the fishing village of Ouranoupolis, the jumping-off point for pilgrimages to Mount Athos. But the crowd at the administrative center inspired new fears: that I would be denied a permit for one of the ten places allotted each day to foreigners; that the ferry down the coast to Daphne—the only way, in winter, onto the easternmost of the three fingerlike peninsulas reaching into the sea—would leave without me.

I was last in line, and I pictured myself having to return to Thessaloniki to secure another set of documents with which to enter the theocratic state. Ahead of me stood an old man in sandals, a crazed, rank-smelling German with a white beard and ponytail. He was muttering to himself when the policeman behind the counter asked him to declare his faith. Bewildered, he looked to his left and right before barking, "Lutheran." Then he shuffled off with his diamonitirion—a permit good for four days on the Holy Mountain. Soon, I had one, too.

Monks, laborers, and pilgrims boarded the ferry, many choosing to stay outside, in a cold wind, for the duration of the two-hour journey. I climbed to the top level and stood near the forward railing. How often had I imagined this moment! Mount Athos has been a beacon for me during my travels through the war zones of the former Yugoslavia, a distant light I dreamed of following away from the sea of hatred I was charting.

The suffering and carnage had darkened my outlook, and just before flying abroad I had sent my literary agent a new book about the war, the writing of which left me exhausted. I prayed that a walk around the peninsula that forms the spiritual heart of the Eastern Orthodox Church would restore me. In this monastic republic, which for more than a millennium has been a center for contemplative life, I hoped not only to witness ancient rituals and ways of living, but also to experience, as the author of Ecclesiastes wrote, "a time to keep silence."

The surrounding hills were thick with trees, in sharp contrast to the fields, pastures, and eroded slopes of the mainland. Spared the blight of clear-cutting, which has left Greece with Europe's lowest percentage of forested land, Athos is rich in chestnut and fir and holly oak—an ecological haven, 480 kilometers square, interspersed with monastic settlements ringed by terraced gardens, olive groves, and vineyards.

A place apart, a poet said.

Christopher Merrill '79 is an award-winning poet, literary critic, and journalist, whose books have been translated into 16 languages.This essay is excerpted from Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain by Christopher Merrill. Copyright © Christopher Merrill, 2005. Published by arrangement with the Random House Publishing Group.