How Losing Everything In A Wildfire Led Pico Iyer To Seek Silence

在野火中失去一切如何导致皮科·艾耶寻求沉默

Fresh Air

艺术

2025-01-16

44 分钟
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In 1990, writer Pico Iyer watched as a wildfire destroyed his mother's Santa Barbara home, where he also lived. In Aflame, he recounts the devastation of the fire — and the peace he found living in a Benedictine monastery. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

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  • This is FRESH air.

  • I'm Terry Gross.

  • When we first booked today's interview weeks ago, we had no idea how timely it would be.

  • And for such a tragic reason.

  • My guest, Pico Iyer, has written a new memoir about what he's experienced and learned in the more than 30 years that he's been going on retreats in a Benedictine monastery to practice silence and for contemplation to get both out of himself and the world and deeper in.

  • But the book begins with fire, and fire is a theme throughout.

  • The monastery is surrounded by 900 acres of trees and on one side the ocean.

  • It's in California's Big Sur, one of the most beautiful places in the US on the first page, a monk is describing to Ayer a wildfire that came close to burning down the monastery.

  • It wasn't the first time and it wasn't the last time.

  • At one point, the road was blocked and there was no way out.

  • A little later in the book, we learned that Ayer's family home in Santa Barbara, where they had lived for about a quarter century, where he was living at the time with his mother that burned to the ground.

  • At the time, that fire was part of the worst fire in California history.

  • He was at home alone with his mother's cat when he was suddenly surrounded by flames five stories high and had no way out.

  • After three hours of terror, he was rescued by a good Samaritan traveling around in a water truck with a hose.

  • He and his mother lost everything, but he survived and the cat survived.

  • His memoir is titled A Learning From Silence.

  • A Flame is about the flame of passion and commitment in the monastic life, even for visitors on a retreat like him.

  • And it's about the destructive, deadly flames of fire.

  • Eyre is best known for his travel writing and for reporting and reflecting on the cultures and religions of the world.

  • His previous book, the Half known In Search of Paradise, found him traveling around the world to discover what different cultures and religions perceive as paradise.