While visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a photography workshop I wondered into a shop called The Monks Corner. It’s a pleasant little shop with handmade soaps and jam. Books written by spiritual masters line the shelves, gilded icons peer at you from around each corner and a photo mounted behind the counter of a desert place fills me with peace. It is a monastery and I’ve seen it before – in a  book the previous evening.

I inquired with the shopkeeper about the photo. He informed me that the shop is the sole support system for the Monks of Abiquiú – a small desert town about 75 miles away. In the photo is the home of the Benedictine Monks – The Monastery of Christ in the Desert. The shop keeper is a volunteer and a frequent guest of the monastery. He suggested I visit.

So of course I did..

Before day break the following morning I headed out to this tiny town of Abiquiú, New Mexico.

I followed his directions exactly: Take Route 85 north from Santa Fe through the town of Abiquiú, continue on past The Ghost Ranch Visitor center – A spiritual center and former home of acclaimed artist Georgia O’Keefe. Just past the center is a mile marker identifying Forest Road 151. Keep a watchful eye for an amphitheater on your left. When you pass it you’ve missed Forest Road by a mile and you need to turn around and go back. Heading south now you will hang a right onto a dirt road. You cross a cattle grid, which is a heads up that there is herds of cattle nearby.

The 13 mile deserted and at times impassible dirt road runs along the Rio Chama. The land is protected by the Federal Government and a herd of cattle.

The desert is crisp and clear in late March. The icy river cuts through the red rock, a stark contrast to the North American Mesa landscape. Along the riverbank a couple of men put out a camp fire. I lost radio reception 25 miles back and running into my fellow man is anything but reassuring.

As the sun creeps up over the mesa I would trade the silence of the desert for the reassurance of a marker that I’m in the right place.

Once at the monastery I participated in morning prayer and the Abbot invited me to join them and the other guests for lunch.

A day in a monastery looks something like this: Morning Prayer, silence, Mass, silence, a freshly prepared lunch with great food (and silence), afternoon prayer and then I began to notice something. Incredible silence.

To notice silence is much different than just being silent.